It was when I got to the main room that I could see that we had indeed been the last to arrive.
And as I expected, neither Nomiko nor my mother had arrived yet.
"Good, everyone is here. So we'll be able to share what we know as well."
It may sound strange, but my father never speaks up in this kind of situation, let alone decides to create this kind of discussion.
I don't know if it's the fact that he's back with my mother and sister that makes him give it his all, but it's very rare to see him so involved in a conversation.
"And if we don't have any leads, what should we say?" I asked as I continued to make my way around the room.
"If you don't have any leads, you can give us a summary of your day, tell us what area you visited and the approximate number of people you passed."
"Um, okay."
Instinctively, what came to mind when my father mentioned the summary of our day, I immediately thought of my kiss with Alia.
She must have been thinking the same thing, since our eyes met at the same moment for a short time.
But since this is not the time to think about that, I concentrated almost directly on the rest of her sentence.
So as much as I understand the usefulness of the summary of our day and the places we visited, I don't understand at all why he wants to know the number of people we passed.
And even if I did understand that, it's simply impossible to know how many people we passed in one day, especially since we did each street several times, so we might have passed some people two or three times.
If we had concentrated on counting the number of people we saw, with two people we would have been able to keep track of up to 200 more or less and an hour maximum, although we knew that there was a fairly large margin of error.
But in this case, if I say 1000, I couldn't even tell the margin of error I made.
However, considering the population of Dorta, I can say with certainty that we met at most 500 people. Because out of more than 3000 inhabitants, never 500 of them would have had the idea to go out on the same day in the same place.
In my opinion, the figure must be between 200 and 400 at the most.
"Well, since it was my idea, I'll start by telling you everything else we know. My father began to say, while I was still lost in thought. I didn't even have time to understand what he had just said when he continued.
"So Sonia and I looked all over the shopping street and as you can see, we didn't find him. But we didn't come up empty-handed either. Sonia may have found a clue to Nomiko's whereabouts. According to what a lady told her, a girl matching her description was seen early this morning. And to top it all off, she seemed to be looking for someone. Unfortunately, we don't know where she is or where the lady saw her. But it's a good clue for our research.
Indeed, it seems to be a good clue, although it seems strange to me that we haven't found her. Knowing her, she would have gone straight to look for us in the main streets of the city. So it seems strange that none of the three groups saw her.
"Well, I'll go on. So, with Shiro, we didn't find them either. And unfortunately, we don't have any more leads to give you to help you." Selstine continued, bowing to show her disappointment.
"Don't worry, you don't need to bow for that." My father replied, embarrassed.
"I think it's my turn. So, Alia and I have searched the central square and the small streets around it, we've visited them several times and we haven't seen anyone who knows, or has seen, Nomiko and Kana. We will be of no use to you today.
Well yes, I must have lied.
At no time did we think of asking the passer-by for help, I admit that it was a mistake on our part, because it could have greatly helped us in our research.
But, at least tomorrow we will think of asking them for help, hoping that they know something.
"I thank you all for looking and now that everyone has the same information, you can do what you want for a little while. I'll call you back when it's time to eat. My father finally said after my very unconstructive speech.
As soon as he finished, I went straight to my room without talking to Alia once, for fear that they would find out something.
This may sound strange. But it's always when you have something to hide from one or more people that things come out.
But this has a logical explanation.
When you want to hide something, you want to make it look like it's normal, so you're going to make it look like nothing. But for most people this will show, because our habits and reflexes will be changed. These are the kind of people who are trustworthy, but unable to hold back, because at some point the truth will come out of their mouths.
On the other hand, some people will be able to keep this secret without any problem. But unfortunately, if you are in the second group, this is not a good sign, because it means that you are either a very good actor able to hide your emotions, or you are an outstanding liar and you manage to lie without any scruples to those around you.
For me, I would be unable to place myself in one of these two boxes, because I know that I am capable of lying, without any problems. But I am unable to hide my emotions when they are too strong. So by deduction, I would say that I am an emotional liar.
Which is neither a good nor a bad thing since it proves that I still have my own emotions, but on the other hand, I am able to lie as long as I keep my mind cold. I can therefore compare myself to a double-edged blade. Useful on the one hand, but deadly on the other.
And so it was to avoid lying to everyone that I took refuge, alone in my room.
Unfortunately, I don't remember much of what happened next, because once I got into my bed, I fell asleep almost instantly.
[ 07/07/499 15 h 50 ]
It had already been more than three hours since we searched the same place again, the groups were the same. And apparently the results hadn't changed at all: none of the groups had heard from Nomiko or my mother.
I expected the atmosphere between Alia and me to be weird, but everything seemed to be fine. We were able to talk without being embarrassed when we looked at each other and neither of us had tried to kiss each other, yet.
And today we thought of asking passers-by for help, unfortunately no one had seen them.
What seemed strange was that we were passing a lot of people, and even if I tried to recognise some of the faces from time to time, at each corner I had the impression that I was discovering new people each time. It was as if the faces of the people we passed changed with each street.
I had already noticed this yesterday, but not to this extent. I think the effect seems to be tenfold, because today I'm trying to memorize most of the faces I pass.
Which unfortunately for us, doesn't work and seems to be just a waste of time.
It is thus on this failure that we continued desperately to look for them in this immense place.
[ 07/07/499 16 h 30 ]
"Yùichi, where are you?"
This voice sounded nothing like Alia's, it was far too high pitched. Which meant it was Shiro's, unfortunately, I was unable to tell where it was coming from.
"Shiro, I'm here!"
I had to look for her for about twenty seconds before I found her right in the centre of the square, with a smile on her face.
"That's it, we found Nomiko."