“So this it the first step?” That's just perfect.

“I asked you how could you be so sure…” Suho said in the tone of 'I-told-you-so'. Mood-kill. Gosh! I was really hoping for a door. It would take my mind off certain things.

“Yes, I know, I know, but this doesn’t make any sense.”

“It kind of does.”

The bookcase’s backboard proudly presented two words to the duo: “Search harder.” And it's quite obvious what was meant with those words. Looking back at the two... They probably looked exactly like the one, who had written those words on the wood, had expected them to look like – bewildered, confused, flatted out, dumb, mouths tangling open, blankly staring at the board.

Chen scratched his head and sighed. “Well, this is underwhelming.”

“You don't say.” Suho chuckled. He stepped closer to the bookcase to have a better look of the board. There must be something here. There must be. That's if the guys who... built this castle and this underground library actually bothered to leave a trail of messages behind for people to find the place. - Any anomaly in the wood-structure would be enough for a lead...

“Are you looking for splinters or something? More dust perhaps?”

“Hush,” Suho said glancing over his shoulder, ”And don't touch anything,” he ordered the other, ”Just to be sure.” Now, let's see. Oh. This seems to be something.

“OK.” Chen simply said and leaned on the bookcase to his left. He noticed there was a funny peg in there – it was colored black. “Hmm... Funny.” he mumbled and peeked if the other wasn’t looking. Despite of the elder’s worlds he still touched something. There's no way that it's a button to open the door... look at this – it's just a peg. - There're no weird strands or anything here... What should I even look for? Hmm- Well, he was about to touch something.

“What are you doing?” Suho suddenly interrupted Chen's thoughts.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” the older asked coming closer.

“There's this black peg here.” Chen said pointing at it.

“Interesting.” Suho stated. “If there's a black peg here then what's on there?”

The older went back to the moved bookcase and had a look on its side that laid against the bookcase which had a black peg in it. The so-called 'secret door' bookcase had a black peg in its side as well, but there was also a writing there. It was quite unnoticeable because the ink had somewhat worn off over the time, but if one tried he could read it anyway. Suho didn't understand it because it was written in old lettering so Chen translated the text.

“'Second step: find the dry bricks in the wall – one to open and one to close.'” Chen read the text out loud. “What do they mean by dry bricks? The whole wall is dry.”

“I don't know.” Suho shrugged. “Wouldn't it be funny it was to taken literally?”

Chen shrugged in response. He was more excited about finding the underground library than solving weird riddles, but in order to find the place he was supposed to solve this riddle. My brain is overloaded with information right now so getting any logical suggestion for an answer to this thing will be rather difficult...

“But then again we'll never find out if we won't try.” the older said walking up to the table where Chen had sat all these weeks. He took a jug full of water from the table and brought it up to the wall.

“You can't be serious...,” Chen looked at the other with a tired look, “There are book around here. It's not the best idea to splash water around here.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No. But we could at least narrow the area where we splash the water.”

“Right. Sorry, I got carried away.”

After some time of aimlessly staring at the wall Suho remembered something.

“Wait!” He went up to the bookcase again and looked at the backboard. “That's it.”

“What's it?”

“Come here. See this,” he pointed at the place in the backboard – it was above the third shelf, the same one where the book had laid.

“What am I looking at?” Chen didn't understand.

“Sheesh, buddy. You have excellent ears but your eyesight is lacking... - Knock on the board.”

Chen did. Half of the third shelf's backboard fell off. “Now that's more like it.” the man got excited.

Suho smirked and nodded. He splashed some water on the wall which was on the same height with the shelf.

And nothing happened. No dry bricks.

“Well, I'm completely lost,” Suho said shrugging and looking at Chen. “Maybe you translated the riddle wrong.”

“Very funny. I'm not that messed up.” Chen objected. But just to be sure he still checked the message again. No, he didn't understand it wrong. “Why would they make the board fall off then?”

“Maybe because of this,” Suho said and pointed at the wall. “I think that the timing was off because the castle is so old.”

Two bricks in the wall were clearly dry – lighter colored – then the other ones around them.

The two men looked at each other and then back on the wall. Chen walked up to the wall and pushed the left brick.

“How to you know that this is the right one?”

“Just because.”

The brick moved into the wall just a bit, but it was enough to make the machine-work in the walls move. The two held their breath. Something creaked, something clacked – something was definitely going on.

But nothing appeared before them. Where's the door?

What a bummer.

Oh, wait. Something's happening under the floor.

The men turned around. Right there! Right there: the place Chen had heard being hollow was now lowering.

This was the door! The stairs actually... but who cares!

***

“Man! It stinks in here.”

“This place has probably been locked since forever so...”

“You've got a point. But: where are the books?”

“In the book... uhh... on the pedestal? - There.”

“Oh, would you look at that.” Chen went up to the pointed area and had a look at the books' titles,

There weren't many books down here. Only one, to be exact. It was laid on pedestal so whoever came here could open the heavy pile of smelly old papers without moving the book from its place. And come to think of it: this book is probably a good few decades older than these two men here and who knows what will happen to the book if someone would just simply decides to pick them up. Books this old will definitely fall apart and it would be a bummer if that happened.

“They've made my life easy: the First Constitution.” He smiled as he opened the book. “And a table of contents. - Very nice.” So he turned the pages and eyed the text on them. He didn't have time to read it all he only needed one little sentence... or two.

Meanwhile Suho decided to have a look around the underground library. It wasn't very big maybe a quarter of the library-hall above. As already said there was only one book down here. It was probably the most valued one then.

“Found it. - Here it says that the King in rule has the power to call off contracts of any kind as long as the parties involved have been noticed of the canceling and they agree to the decision.”

“That's quite easy, isn't it? If we only had the King here.”

“I thought JR was made the King the day his father left.” Chen raised a brow and looked back at the law before him. He noticed that there was another detail to it. Oh, great...

“No, not really. He has the liberty of making decisions but his father is the ruling King whom we need.”

“That's not the only thing...” Chen sighed, “We also need that damned Blinder's Pact.”

“What's that?”

“I have no idea. - Let's get outta here. I need fresh air.”

***

Suho and Chen had moved the bookcase back to its original spot and filled it with books once again.

“We could just write our own Blinder's Pact...” Suho thought out loud once they had taken their seats by the table.

“And if it all comes out then let the heavens help us because the people already have little faith in the honesty of the Royals. We wouldn't want to take responsibility for that, would we?”

“Finally the Chen I know is back!” Suho laughed. “Yeah, I know. But do have any idea where it may be?”

“My guess is that somewhere underground, but I'm not going back there right now.”

“OK, do what you like,” Suho said standing up, “I need to go anyway. Kris put me in charge.”

“I'll come with you. I'm starving.” Chen said following the first one's lead.

“You were up all night, weren't you?”

“No, not really. I just got up extra early.”

Oh, dear... this is one crappy chapter. I'm in my writer's block right now and yeah... You get the point.

I don't know if I can update on Saturday so I'm putting this up now.