Rain poured in the dark of the night, the streets gleaming with neon reflections and bright flashes of lightning. They were empty. Most people would be fast asleep around that time anyway.

  KFC members, however, weren’t usually part of “most people” even at the best of times, and their headquarters turned crisis center in Akihabara was packed full of volunteers. Ishiro and Hotaru had requisitioned the entire floor of the coffee shop.

  The owner protested at first, but Ishiro settled the matter in seconds: one million yen per day, ten days upfront. No discussion, no negotiation. This was about twenty times what the place would earn in a normal business day, but they had no time to worry about such trivial matters.

  They now had three surveillance rooms filled with computers and screens, two dormitories for people to crash when needed and a meeting room. In the floor above, Yuto had his podcasting studio, and he was going non-stop, updating his followers with every scrap of news on Kaori’s kidnapping and asking listeners for any possible hint of a clue into the matter. His audience dwarfed that of mainstream media.

  At the moment however, his message was going on a loop:

  “Please contact us with any clue or sighting of Mashiro Kaori-sama, of her kidnapper or possible location.”

  The message was followed by a long list of contact details, phone numbers, emails, social medias, Line, messaging apps, Discord group… and it looped back again and again.

  Yuto himself was in the conference room down below with the core members of the KFC. Hotaru closed the door and locked it. He produced a heavy Faraday bag and passed it around. In silence, all members placed their cellphones inside. He sealed the bag and turned on his RF spectrum analyzer, going around the room. The only visible signal was that of the Wi-Fi. He unplugged the router and checked again. This time, he had an all clear.

  “It’s safe to speak,” Hotaru declared. “There are no listening devices here.” They had covered the walls with sound insulation foam and the sounds of the storm raging outside were barely audible.

  Kenji stood up. “I’m back from Akita. The police found the white van abandoned near the city. It ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. I checked the exact location and talked to the locals. It’s a small place. Nothing around, only a couple of roads. There’s no escape and there are no foreigners in living in that area at all. It is surrounded by mountains, escaping on foot while carrying Kaori would be near impossible, let alone remaining unseen for that long. The mountains are swarming with police and there are checkpoints on all roads surrounding the region. My car’s been searched five times during the trip.”

  “Good. What’s your conclusion?” Hotaru asked.

  “Something is wrong. With this level of scrutiny, they should have found Kaori already. Maybe they swapped cars somewhere and headed in a different direction, but I don’t believe it, something stinks in that story. Even a car swap wouldn’t be let them through police barrages, and a foreigner would have absolutely no chance to escape detection in these conditions. If they were smart enough to pull off the kidnapping in Chinzanso, there is no way they would be stupid enough to rely on stealing a local car on the spot, or trying to flee through mountain roads. The police should have realized that by now, and yet, they are still all concentrated over that area.”

  “You’re correct,” Hotaru said. “This entire investigation is a sham, and Oroshi is lying.”

  The statement had the impact of a fragmentation grenade. All eyes were on him, wide with surprise.

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  He proceeded to detail his findings at the hotel. A growl of rage rose in the room when he talked about the fact that bullets had been fired to kill and that they had been aimed at Kaori. When he got to his suspicions that Oroshi’s wounds did not match the scene, Kenji exploded, slamming his fist on the table.

  “Why didn’t you tell us anything before? You let me go waste my time up north on a wild goose chase while our Kaori remains in the clutch of a kidnapper!”

  “Calm down, I did not waste your time. It was necessary. We aren’t flying under the radar ourselves. Millions are checking the podcast, they know we are investigating the kidnapping. If we didn’t have any presence near Niigata and Akita, we could find ourselves in serious danger and alert our enemies that we don’t believe their story. We have to pretend to buy the official story, and sell it to the public, or we won’t be able to investigate. Your being on the ground—asking questions and running into the police, making contacts—was a priceless contribution to our cover.”

  Kenji looked at Hotaru in amazement. Hotaru continued:

  “Besides, I had to double check some things. My conclusion is that Kaori has not been kidnapped. She is fleeing.” He paused, letting his words sink in.

  “One of my police contacts confirmed that they haven’t found any trace of the ‘kidnapper’ inside the hotel. Nowhere. Not in the entrance hall, not in the security room, not in the corridors… there is not a single trace of the man inside. But they found footprints outside under the window. 29 cm long, a pair of trail running shoes based on the print. With that size, the man’s probably a foreigner indeed, but that might be the only thing that’s true in the official story.”

  “But they reported they had found tracks inside!” Yuto objected.

  “Yes, they did. But my man is part of the initial response team and he confirmed these tracks weren’t there when he got on the scene, they were added afterwards. I also didn’t see any traces in the stairs, and I was looking very carefully for them. If we believe Oroshi’s story, the man was running in the corridors while carrying Kaori on his shoulder. He punched Oroshi and drew blood, there should have been visible traces somewhere. There were traces of Kaori’s hand on the corridor’s wall but no traces of the man.”

  He paused again, but no one said a word, so he continued, “I checked and confirmed that Kaori was inside the hotel that evening. I spoke with the reception staff and one of the maids. There’s no doubt she was in the hotel that evening. Her room was clean. No one had slept in her bed but a couple of dresses lay on it and her make-up box was open in the bathroom. Nothing was stolen.”

  “How does that make any sense? What does this all mean?” Ishiro asked.

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I think that Kaori came down to visit Oroshi that night—”

  “Why would she do that?” Ishiro interrupted.

  Everyone turned to him. They would have laughed but the implication tore at them. Ishiro looked around and the light of understanding finally made its way through the lesser used portions of his cerebral cortex. His face turned red with a mix of embarrassment and anger.

  Hotaru resumed, “whatever happened, I think she ran for her life alone while dodging bullets and jumped out of that window on her own. The man outside carried her away, his footprints were found in the garden, but hers were not.”

  Kenji broke the silence, “But how could a man be there in the middle of the night? It makes no sense.”

  “I haven’t been able to figure that part out either, but the facts show beyond reasonable doubt that the man was not inside the hotel. That means he didn’t jump down from the second floor with Kaori on his shoulder, and he didn’t kill the guard inside the control room… but someone else did.

  “Bottom line, I think we have to assume that Kaori has not been kidnapped; she is fleeing.”

  “But where?” Kenji asked aloud.

  They fell silent, digesting the news.

  Koji raised his hand nervously. All eyes turned to him. Gathering his courage, he said:

  “One of our listeners worked the night shift at a Family Mart in Fujisawa. Kaori-sama’s pink car passed in front of him when he was taking a cigarette break. If she is fleeing, maybe she took her car.”