Reborn in another world as a Hermaphrodite

But with the swing clearly flipped upside down, she knew someone had come by and used it.

"I see you... Come on and show yourself... There's no need to hide."

Mary whispers as she makes a last-ditch effort to make sure no one is hiding around the corner to kite her in circles.

Just as she was about to head to the back and leave the park, Mary suddenly noticed something white hanging from the tree.

Within seconds, she realized there was one last spot in the park she hadn't searched.

"Luqing, can you help me climb up the tree?" Mary asked as they stood before it.

"Sure. But please be careful with the tree. Lady Ava really likes sitting in here."

To Mary's surprise, her body suddenly started levitating up until she could reach one of the branches.

As she looked forward, she finally caught Sophia hiding on top of a big branch that had a ton of leaves covering it.

"Ha! Caught you."

"Dang it. You got me."

Sophia quickly jumped down from the tree, but to her surprise, her body leviated before hitting the floor.

"Please be careful, Miss Sophia," Luqing warned as Sophia finally touched the ground.

"It's only a two-meter drop onto a bunch of dirt. I know what's my limit... Mary, you jumping down or not?"

Sophia asked as she looked back at the tree, only to see Mary sitting on the branch and looking a little nervous.

"I-I don't know if I can do this." Mary nervously stated after noticing how high up she really was.

"Come on, Luqing and I are down here. You saw me just jumping down and being completely fine, right?"

After a short silence, Sophia added more to the fuel.

"Remember, time is still ticking. You still haven't found Alex yet——"

Mary instantly jumped down, only to be levitating in the air again before her foot gently touched the floor.

"Thank you Luqing." Mary looked over with gratitude.

"No problem."

With still forty minutes left, Mary immediately headed back to the main entrance of the mansion.

Then she took a left turn, going to the last place she hadn't explored in the mansion itself.

As she walked down the hallway, she could see doors labeled with a name at almost every step.

"Who lives in this room?" Sophia curiously asked.

"This section of the house is the maid's living quarter. Down below is the laundry and the kitchen."

After walking for a bit, the two girls arrived at the laundry room, as Luqing had stated.

There were a ton of different kinds of machines, clearly meant for different kinds of clothing.

Next, it was the kitchen, where there were almost ten different stoves and a ton of cabinets.

"Oh boy, this is going to take a long time," Mary murmured as she began opening the cabinets one by one before closing them.

"Let me help you."

Even though Sophia joined in to help, it still took ten minutes to go through the entire kitchen.

With only five minutes left, Mary began running to the last place where Alex could be hiding.

When she arrived at the backyard, she was surprised to see Alex in one of the beach chairs with his eyes closed.

"You finally caught me. It took you long enough," Alex murmured as he opened his eyes back up.

"You had been just sitting here the whole time?"

Sophia questioned as she thought back to the struggle of sitting on an uncomfortable branch the whole time.

"Yeah. To be honest, I thought I was going to be caught when I saw you being found in the park.

But Mary decided to search the left side first. So, I got off pretty lucky... Besides, there is nowhere to hide here."

Sophia and Mary were a little stunned as they both turned their attention to what Alex was talking about.

It was a giant grass field, with a small hill in the distance and a forest ahead of them.

Unless he hid in the forest, there was indeed nowhere to hide from someone who was standing at the backyard entrance.

But with the heavy snow layered on the grass field, it was clearly a bad idea to go outside.

"How about that barn?" Mary pointed out, as it was a building still connected to the rest of the mansion.

"I already tried going in, but it's locked. Luqing, do you know what is inside?" Alex curiously asked.

"It's just the storage unit... Ahem, please come inside. The outside is very cold."

Luqing advised as the outside started snowing again, with a cold breeze blowing into the mansion.

The three quickly went back inside before closing the glass door and heading back to the living room, where they had started.

"It's Sophia's turn now, right?" Mary asked as they sat down on the sofa.

"We already looked around the house. It's not fun to explore the same place again." Sophia pointed out, clearly wanting out of the game.

"But that's not fair. You still haven't been the seeker yet." Mary complained, not wanting her off the hook.

Seeing the two start to argue back and forth, Alex suddenly has an idea.

"How about we go upstairs? Luqing, there is a second floor to the house, right?" Alex asked.

"Yes, but they are all just empty guest bedrooms. I don't think Lord Fredrick would be happy to see someone go up there."

With that idea struck down, Alex came up with another idea.

"How about a twenty-minute hide and seek, where we can only hide our side of the bedrooms?"

"That sounds perfect!" Mary quickly agreed to it, making the situation two-to-one.

"Fine. I'll be in the living room here and be the seeker. You two can go hide."

As Sophia put the blindfold on, Alex and Mary quickly bolted out as fast as they could.

"Alex, where are you thinking of hiding?"

"I'm going to hide in Mom's room. I bet she's not going to expect this." Alex explained as he stopped right by the first room.

"Then I'm going to hide in the last one."

Mary quickly ran to the end of the hallway as Alex turned the doorknob to the bedroom.

Fortunately, it wasn't locked, as he was easily able to step inside.

Closing the door, he turned to examine the room, only to see it to be mostly the same as his room.

The only difference was that the bed was nicely folded into a square, and Katherine's backpack lay on her desk.

Looking for a bit, he decided to sit in the chair, as he didn't want to put himself in a difficult position over a pointless game.

Feeling a little bored, he took one of the books from the bookshelf next to the bed.

Unsurprisingly, it was some sort of math textbook that he couldn't understand at all.

After putting it away, he started examining the books on the bookshelf, trying to find something he could actually understand.

Suddenly, he could hear footsteps outside, causing him to remain still until he heard the door in the other room being opened.

Alex slowly moved back, making as little noise as possible before returning to his seat empty-handed.

Once again, being a little bored, Alex's mind started to get a little curious with the backpack in front of him.

It was completely zipped closed, which caught him a little off guard as Katherine usually never bothered closing it all the way.

Lifting it, he could feel there was nothing inside besides something that felt like a book as it pressed flat on the bottom.

Unable to control his hand, Alex slowly opened it out of curiosity, only to find his prediction to be correct.

Inside was a single book with unknown letters in the front that he couldn't understand.

It was clearly another language not from this part of the world, as it didn't have any sense of alphabets at all.

Rather, it looked more like some sort of words made of radicals, similar to the one in the East.

"Why does Mom have this book inside her backpack?" Alex wondered as he flipped to the first place.

To his surprise, there was nothing inside the book. Every page he flipped over to check was blank.

As he flipped to the last page, he suddenly saw his face inside the book.

"What the fuck?"

Alex quickly closed it again before opening it again, only to see his face still on the last page.

It was almost as if someone had taken a camera picture of him, as it was fully colored rather than hand-drawn like a picture.

"Huh... Did Mom use those crystal cards to take a picture of me and put it in here?"

Alex thought to himself as he remembered when Miss Amy showed the class the crystal cards containing videos of them fighting.