Ejiro didn’t want him. He would never want him. Attraction was all well and good; Obiora saw it as relatively harmless. But a crush? Crushes spoke of longing and hoping; wishing—be it conscious or subconscious—that the object of your desires would one day return your attention. For Obiora, that way lay heartache.
He needed to squash down this ridiculous crush by any means possible.
“Are you ready, bachelors?” came a tinny voice from overhead when the bachelors were locked inside the room. “Your time starts … now!”
The space mimicked that of a bedroom, with a bed, dresser, reading desk and chair, bookshelf, wardrobe, and a door that led to a bathroom.
“I suppose our exit is a hidden passageway of some sort,” Jin commented, mostly to himself. “It wouldn’t do to have it be where we’d come in from, after all.”
“Right. How do we start?” Ejiro rubbed his hands together excitedly, looking around the room.
Obiora smiled fondly in his direction, then scowled and looked away.
Squash the crush, squash the crush, squash the crush …
“It’s a hostage situation, how cliché,” Jin said from where he was standing by the desk. He turned around to show them a note he was holding.
“Well?” Noah asked. “What does it say?”
““To find the Princess, know where to look; a clue awaits in her favourite book.””
Ejiro snorted. “What a cheesy rhyme.”
Jin looked up, his lips quirked. “Isn’t it?”
Obiora felt a spark of jealousy.
“Obviously, Sophia’s the princess,” Noah reasoned. “But how on earth are we supposed to know her favourite book?”
“Her favourite book is Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko,” Jin and Ejiro said at the same time.
The two men glanced at each other, then laughed as they did.
The spark of jealousy turned into a flame.
“Okay, how do you both know that? I mean, I understand how Ejiro might know, considering he’s been on two dates with her so far, but Jin, you’re in the same boat as me I thought?” Obiora said teasingly, walking until he was standing slightly between Ejiro and Jin.
You’re being ridiculous, his brain said, which he dutifully ignored.
“It was in the fact sheets we were given in the first episode,” Ejiro said, his smile a tad self-conscious.
“You guys read those?” Noah asked incredulously, making them all laugh. He seemed to remember Sophia was currently watching them right now. “I mean, personally, I thought I’d get to know her on her own terms, you know? A fact sheet feels like cheating.”
“Right?” It was a good save, but Obiora agreed, even though the truth was the second he’d put the fact sheet away, he’d promptly forgotten about its existence.
“Well, I mean, I see it more like a summary?” Ejiro explained. “Like, if you went on a dating site and found Sophia’s profile, then all the information there would be like a “fact sheet”, right?”
“Precisely.” Jin nodded. “If it were cheating, then they wouldn’t have been provided, though I do understand where you’re both coming from.”
“All right, come on, we have no time to waste!” Ejiro was already heading to the bookshelf, scanning the titles until he found the right book. He excitedly flipped it open, and another note fell out. His nose wrinkled. “Another cheesy rhyme.” He laughed. ““Clue number two she used to hide, but now these hidden things are her pride.”” Ejiro looked up at Jin and they said it at the same time, “Romance novels.”
Ejiro looked giddy. Obiora wanted to punch something.
“Yeah, but which one?” Noah gestured at the full stack of books on the shelf.
Jin shook his head. He looked smug. “When Sophia was eleven years old, her parents thought she was way too young to be reading Mills & Boon. So, what did she do?” He headed to the wardrobe and opened it, revealing a messy interior; half the clothes were on the floor, the other half arranged haphazardly in hangers above. “She secretly had her cousin borrow the books from the library, and hid them underneath the clothes at the bottom of her wardrobe.”
Jin moved the clothes aside, and lo and behold, there was the next clue.
