After enduring one more night without sleep, I left our room at 6am to confirm something.

Last night, Kishida said he was hiding in a cave behind the waterfall. However, I had my doubts about it, since I found it strange that I had never noticed such a thing before despite visiting the waterfall often during this past week.

If there really was a cave, I should've been aware of it due to my close proximity, so either I had completely missed it, or Kishida wasn't telling the truth to me.

I'd like to believe Kishida was telling the truth, since he seems like an innocent enough person, but the words Shimada said about him were still lingering on the back of my mind. And if he really was lying, what would be the point of telling me this?

I arrived at the waterfall just as the sun was rising. I leaned over the edge of the pond and stuck my hand inside the waterfall.

Immediately, I felt a cooling sensation rush down my fingertips. In this heat, it felt really refreshing, but my goal here wasn't to cool down.

I pushed my hand in further, trying to grope for a potential wall. However, I couldn't feel anything, indicating there might really be a gap behind the waterfall.

"...good thing I decided to come out early."

I didn't really want to resort to this, but I had no other choice. Luckily, no one was around, so it should be safe to do this.

I took off my shirt and pants, stripping down to my underwear. Then, I stepped inside the pool that the waterfall was connected to, before approaching it with my hand stuck out.

Diving in, I felt the waterfall swallow up the majority of my arm before my hand hit an unexpected wall. I narrowed my eyes.

"So there is a gap... but is it big enough for a person to fit inside without being seen?"

Behind the waterfall was less of a cave and more of a shallow concave. Feeling the wall to scale it's height, it was definitely big enough for a person to lay against.

But in this scenario, you'd be constantly covered by the waterfall, so why was Kishida completely dry when he returned from the challenge?

Even with the help of the sun and me giving him a generous estimate between when they returned and when I arrived for his clothes to dry off, I'm certain his hair would still be slightly wet.

After all, he had long bangs and it had good volume, so it'd take longer for his hair to dry up. At the very least, the roots would still be wet. But when I arrived, his hair was completely dry. I don't think it'd sufficiently dry like that in such a short amount of time.

Well, I could speculate all I want, but while I'm here, right in front of the place he was supposedly hiding, I might as well try this hypothesis for myself.

I took a step forward and plunged myself in the waterfall.

As expected, I didn't fit. Me and Kishida have very similar body types, so I think this is pretty conclusive evidence that he lied to me about his hiding space.

Even giving him the most generous benefit of the doubts, this was a lousy spot to hide by all means. Sure, I was behind it, but there wasn't even enough space to submerge my body fully into the crevasse. My front half was still visible inside the waterfall.

Not even Shimada would choose such a sloppy spot for his hiders, especially when he couldn't risk anyone being found due to carrying out his plan on that night.

The question becomes then... why did Kishida lie to me? What was the point of feeding me this information? Did he have a motive to keep his hiding spot a secret?

"What a troublesome teammate..."

I exited the waterfall, swiping back my wet bangs.

It seems everyone Shimada and Nakajima chose for their group were an eccentric bunch. Even though we were working on the pretence of achieving first place, everyone had a different goal and aim. Even I fell into this category.

I sighed and sat on the edge of the rocks lining the pond, letting the sun dry my body before putting my clothes back on.

I really hope no one runs into me here, or else I have a lot of explaining to do.