It's the 4th during lunchtime, America day. I don't remember what I was doing around that time so let's focus on the people who are actually moving this forward.

  "I've got nothing," Catty said.

  They were in a corner where vending machines are. I've been there. You've been there. Everybody in school has been there. Kawakami was eating there once. It's a popur corner. Just enough outside was there. Being pressed against a crook of the school gave it a slight warmth. The skinny vent pipes that emitted heat through their tight bolts may have contributed to that too.

  "Really?" Smarty asked ftly. She was drinking a water bottle. It was healthy. That's what she would say. Boring, but healthy. Don't be like Smarty. If you're spending money, treat yourself. Tell 9/10 doctors to shove it.

  "It's not as if I was scking off! I read the same poem that you did! I'm just not clued into all the references that are in it!" Catty defended.

  Smarty could sigh all she wanted. It was true. That day most of the hype around the school had died along with the poem. We woke up to it probably being deleted by the hacker themselves instead of whatever bozo ran the site. Online was a different story. That's the beauty of the internet. Where the general enthusiasm for Dotto! Koni-chan would die off in my school, lost long before I was alive, it would be kept alive abroad. I'm not sure if the transtion for all nguages was as horrible as the Spanish to Japanese one but some of the sentence structures were just generally incomprehensible. Or maybe the people in subAmerica just couldn't make proper sentences. I don't know. I only know that the people there made jazz.

  The point is that the people who were still interested in solving it went to the forums. Nobody knew about that yet though so let's pretend that I didn't go on that segue.

  Happy id a hand on her friend's shoulder. "It's a hard puzzle. I didn't get that much from it st night either."

  "But you did get something from it?" Smarty asked.

  Happy made a happy affirmation sound. I'd call it a grunt but grunts were way more primal than any sound she generally made.

  "I'm pretty sure that the poem is referring to a phone number."

  Both of the others stood a little straighter when she said that.

  "How did you think of that?" Smarty asked.

  "It's in the first lines. The second then the odd. Every second line then every odd line. We were so focused on the 'song' that we forgot that it was a whole sentence. The next line mentions a tab. You were probably right that it meant the tab from the coffee shop that was next door, but it could also be referring to how the poem itself is formatted. I was using a computer and remembered that the 'tab' button existed when I was formatting my essay! So…"

  The sentence trailed off as Smarty went to her phone. Immediately she started applying the method. Soft whispers were breathed out underneath their ears.

  "Tab, meaning indents. If we count the indents on the even then the odd: eight, one. Yes! Eight, one! But how do you suppose that it's a phone number?"

  Happy leaned over her friend's shoulder to point at the poem. "You see how the final line is directly asking to be texted? I don't think that it's meant to have a hidden meaning. International calls to Japan have 81 at the beginning. My dad needed to make a lot of calls back home when I was younger. He doesn't go to many international meetings anymore."

  "Wow! Good going, Happy!" Catty yelled.

  "Indeed. I didn't even think about reading it like that." Smarty put a hand to her lip, thinking it over. "Let's assume that's how we're meant to read it for now. 8 and 1 would be from the first line. If we assume that the coffee was still significant, then I think that my interpretation is the best: 'cents' means we're meant to divide it like American dolrs, 4.03, leaving the '03' as the cents. That could either mean we're meant to plug in 03 or 3."

  "I think that '03' is more likely, though we shouldn't strike out any option yet. Anything else?" Catty asked.

  Nobody responded. They continued having the meeting though everything that could've been produced had already been done. Everybody did the rest of school diligently. Who knows what that actually means. School for me was ignoring the teachers as I pnned my next heist.

  After their responsibilities, Happy and Smarty were standing at the front door of a very familiar pce. No visible nervousness was present in either of them. Without saying anything, Happy's slender hand pulled open the door.

  "Akechi!?" Makoto yelled.

  Yeah, I'm going to stop doing this gimmick because it's getting kind of stupid. Yes, Smarty is Makoto and Happy is Haru. The final member's identity is a secret for now!

  Inside was the same coffee shop from before. Only a single thing was out of pce.

  "Akechi-san!"

  I wasn't there.

  Akechi lifted his coffee cup in greeting, face curled in a smile. "It's good to see that I'm not the only one who's been charmed by this little pce. One scent of this delightful cup was enough to get me addicted."

  The girls exchanged a gnce again. I'd like to say that they were never clued into what surreptitious meant. These two girls were brash. Born and molded to be in the spotlight. Usually these types were taught how to have a dagger behind their back to supply any smile. Any spy service would do well to avoid these girls.

  The only positive mark that I gave them was being creative. Makoto pulled out her textbook and took a seat in the nearest booth.

  "I thought that this pce was suitable for us to study at. You're free to join, Akechi-san, though I imagine that our curriculum is different from yours."

  "I feel no need to test that assumption." Akechi gestured to the outside with a broad stroke of his hand. "Please don't let me keep you. I'm just wasting time between obligations. I prefer spending it outside rather than staring at my phone."

  "We'll leave you to your rexation then, Akechi-san," Haru said. She brought out her textbook too and sat across from Makoto.

  For some time they were genuinely studying. Neither pretended that anything was wrong. They got different drinks but I don't think anyone remembers what those were. When Makoto's phone buzzed, she allegedly saw a text from another member of the student council for something about a cigarette butt found on campus.

  Her face twisted in displeasure as an annoyed sigh pushed past. "Sorry, Haru-chan. I'm being called out. I know that I said I'd have my evening free for studying, but it's urgent. I'll make it up to you."

  "That's fine! I'll stay here to study a little more. Goodbye, Mako-chan!"

  "Goodbye, Niijima-san," Akechi said.

  There was a guy obviously working off a hangover ying with his face down on the counter. He didn't say anything because he's a rude bum.

  Makoto gave one st wave as she left. Underneath the quickly cooling sky, she pumped her fists.

  "Time to make the most of this," she whispered to herself.

  The poem came up once again. Brainstorming when she should've been focused on her student council work allowed her to come up with a few more clues. While she initially believed that the only reason that they needed to go to the address was for the price of the coffee, further thought brought that into doubt. If they were looking for a full phone number, then either the puzzle pieces were too obscure for them to figure out or they were hidden around the location. The lines which produce a number mentioned the Stone Gate of Qufu. This little tidbit scratched against her memory but didn't produce something immediately.

  It still was bothering her. Looking it up only produced articles on the Confucius temple that were in Qufu. The bottom of her phone bonked against her forehead. All the information of the interwebs was flowing through her neurons. For brief moments of contact her brain was electrically connected with the world's sum of information. It's through this that her eyes snapped open.

  "Confucius!" she breathed out.

  I've mentioned that you're getting summarized conversations here. What you're also getting is a butchery of the leaps in logic. Just warning you.

  So, Confucius was a guy that lived a long time ago and said some stuff that people thought was smart. They thought he was so smart that he has a shrine or two built after him. Pces were named after him. A lot of honor for somebody that we barely could make a full-fledged biography of! There's a bunch of books compiled of all the smart things that Confucius said throughout his life leaving out the times where he cursed after stubbing his toe. It's in these that there's a saying that goes about as follows: one of his students was insulted by a guard, I think. That's the whole story. People's attention spans were bigger back then because their words were brief. It's only theorized that this took pce in Qufu, but that was enough for Makoto to remember the passage because being a diligent student means actually retaining the useless crap they teach you in school.

  There were a few ways that she could interpret it. It could be referring to a literal gate, though that would be metaphorical as heck since there's no such torii gate (they have those in China, right?) in the entirety of Yongen-Jaya to my knowledge. It could be talking about a gatekeeper. After going through the possibilities Makoto's eyes started roving around to find a number: 14:38—look at how many smart things this guy said! Apparently this was the chapter and passage number that this particur smart saying was from on a certain edition, with a little variance depending on the transtion. She was going off the first result that she punched into her phone because she obviously didn't have the exact quotes memorized down to the numbers. This was also a smart decision because it stood to doubt that the person who made the poem had a first edition book on their own shelf, meaning that they probably also used the internet and pulled from the first result.

  An incredible amount of clutter broke through the mirage of an orderly Japan when you actually breathed in the city. Outside of the obvious culprits like Akihabara and my home, many districts had that sleekness which made everything look slippery; that may not make sense on its face, but think about how the streets were clean of potholes and litter, long walls of windows which slid into alternate worlds and certain streets having completely even rooftops. If there weren't stopped cars to center myself, it'd look like a conveyer belt which zooms out to an unknown point where all the city sank into a single point. Does that make sense? It's why there were so many movie posters that just had the main characters standing in an empty street. It was strange having nothing there, letting you see the sleekness that implied movement without moving.

  But this was not how the backstreets are. Racks are nearly full of parked bikes. Clotheslines are kept just a fingertip higher from anybody's easy reach. Tools were sometimes just left outside because we're overly trusting people. Bck streaks left by dirty motorcycles smear certain streets from long ago. Signage occupies every absent part not occupied by a postbox, public phone, front door or splintering telephone pole. It is both the permanent signs and advertisements. Old posters glued against brick walls slightly billowing outwards like a sail. Some of the more enthusiastic kids who put them up had just spped the things next to each other in a chain, with an entire block repeating "KANSAI-STYLE UDON KANSAI-STYLE UDON KANSAI-STYLE UDON". Finding a specific detail in this mess is like pying Where's Waldo without having a specific person that you're trying to find.

  She was walking around like a weirdo. Her head swiveled, looking straight up at some moments, obviously trying to find something while moseying about. Keeping her attention to the street let her not sm into a person.

  I know the exact time that it took for her to find what she needed: twenty one minutes. It was well-hidden so don't be too mean. One of the buildings had its address printed right next to its door that led upwards: 114. An alleyway barely wide enough for people to sidle to the backdoors separated the number from the cracked paper, bright colors faded into a muted shadow of its former self. 380 yen was written in an impact font brought straight to your face from some guys' brass knuckles about the cheapest Asahi that you could get in the city. Brought together because of the advertisement covering one of the three different addresses of the pce was 11 380.

  Finding it made her slightly pump a fist to herself. It was too coincidental for her to let go. So came the entire verse: "Bunny was the singer. Singing by 9. She of the azure-winged moon with her flowing blonde twintails looked underneath the Stone Gate of Qufu. She left without her heart but didn't fall apart." It was a normal convenience store (one that I frequented) which didn't make anything pop out. Nothing indicated singing, the moon, or a heart. None of the stores could even be extrapoted to be like that. Either she was missing another reference or it was referring to being underneath something.

  She went inside. The price of the Asahi was 480 yen. The horrors of an infting world. Besides beer being bad for your heart, she couldn't connect anything. The shelf underneath had Coke products which didn't have any singur number that she could pick out.

  Her knuckles rested against her forehead. I couldn't imagine what was going through her head. I'm not that smart. It's hard to put myself in the shoes of a person smarter than me. Puzzles in hard games were just repeated in my head while I'd mindlessly move my hands around until an answer popped up. The only thing which I could guarantee is that she finally took in the poem as a whole. 'Tab' meant both the tabs that were used when typing the poem and the tab for the price of the Colombian coffee. 'Stone Gate of Qufu' itself could've been used again. Nothing was stone, obviously. There were stone-like things in our modern day but we've progressed far past crassly cutting the Earth up to make mud huts, probably. I'm not entirely sure what our houses are made from.

  So she thought about it metaphorically. Gate could mean entrance or exit. There was definitely an entrance or exit to both buildings. So she looked up.

  Tilted away from the building was the fascia sign that proudly named it 'Ryu's Pce'. Normally the backside of these were boring gunmetal gray which had only been painted the fun red and white colors of the front. Makoto gasped when she saw it: a panorama of stickers that covered every inch of the back. Bright neons existed next to bck and reds posted up by edgy kids.

  Asking the puzzle maker themselves ter brought crification. Once upon a time there was a newspaper stand next to the front door. Kids figured out that you could use it to climb up onto a ridge and some little shit started the tradition. The faded piece of concrete saved from the years of rain was still there. By that time it was too te, with the sign already having been subsumed by the stickers.

  This was the line of logic that required her to wriggle down multiple curves: first figuring out the exact number, finding the number, realizing that the stone gate wasn't only metaphorical, only to get trapped on the final step that should've been the easiest. There really was a sensory overload there in all fairness. Even if one had blonde twintails, it'd be muttered underneath the wave of references and callouts. Some simply posted up the defining ndmarks of their part of town while others went a little more creative. Homemade stickers bragging about how 'Keta wuz here' showed the dedication that grew as this pce became a favorite haunt. Some had obscure imagery that either meant nothing or only meant something to a single group which still meant it meant nothing. There was an awesome one of Revy with her boobs out but some guy put a sticker of Mario staring straight at you over it.

  "Yo."

  Makoto jumped. This is where I reenter.

  She just stared straight at me like I was the one being rude here. The sliding doors kept reopening when she kept shuffling to get a new view on the stickers. The cashier inside looked annoyed.

  After cutting out the death gre, she asked, "why are you here?"

  I don't know. Maybe accepting that I was now an employed Phantom Thief improved my mood. It now felt instead of being forced to do vigintism, now I was doing it because it's just how it worked. Or maybe actually going out to work out for the sake of working out improved my mood. Can't say either way. A lot of the time my mood changes and I just kind of take it how it is.

  "I live around here. I think it's a little weirder how you're here and staring up there." I gnced up there before double-taking. "Huh. Look at that."

  "I can go where I want, can't I?"

  I couldn't pull my eyes back down. "Sure, but you can understand that I feel weird how you've come around to my neck of the woods two days in a row. It feels like you're here for a reason."

  She sniffed. I'm pretty sure that was substituting a 'you're correct' which meant that she didn't have to say that out loud to me. "Haru-chan and I visited Lebnc again so we could study."

  "Really? I thought that she didn't like coffee. Did she have some kind of awakening?"

  There was a long pause where I thought that she had just left. Looking back down locked eyes with the weird staring girl. It didn't feel like her eyes were directed towards my scar but I still felt self-conscious.

  "Why does Haru-chan like you?"

  It was a strange question, strange enough that I started thinking like a guilty person leafing through everything that I'd done through the past few days. Only after realizing how ridiculous that was did I finally pull myself together to create an eloquent answer.

  "Huh?"

  She continued staring. And there it was! She finally looked at the bandage that attracted the exact same amount of attention. It was preferable to leaving that ugly scar facing the world.

  "She's talked positively about you even when you're not there. What did you two do? Usually she supports me with everything, but she was willing to defend you even after I expined how you yelled at me for no reason."

  Chalk it up to my good mood that I didn't snap back at her. "I've only seen her while working at the pnt shop. That's really it."

  "That's it?"

  "That's it."

  She huffed. "She's too nice for her own good."

  "Maybe. I barely know her. Last I talked to her she wanted to know who gave me this scar for some reason. She definitely is too nice."

  Makoto's face screwed up in a way that was confusing back then and is immensely funny looking back on it.

  Getting her stuck in a rut where she was obviously displeased by something gave me the perfect opportunity. Don't take this as premeditated. If it weren't for getting this moment then we would've probably gone till the heat death of the universe, reincarnation or heaven. But while you guys should know me as vindictive and whatever other bad words you want to pin on me, I'd like to think that I can own up to my screw ups.

  I bowed. It was a bit shallow. I'm out of practice, sue me. Only when I rose out of it did I speak.

  "About that—sorry about yelling at you. I was having a bad day and I get really irritable when—that's everybody, I guess. Still, sorry. Shouldn't have done that. Shouldn't have done that in front of anybody and I definitely shouldn't have said that snide thing afterwards. I'm also a complete dick for kicking your books. So I'm sorry. What I did is inexcusable and I can understand if you don't want to forgive me."

  Her arms crossed. It was loose. Her face was still tinged in displeasure that I couldn't make out. Once again her eyes snapped to my bandaid.

  Felt that she hadn't really accepted it yet which meant I needed to continue groveling.

  "I'm not saying sorry because you know a customer that I've barely talked to. I'm saying sorry because it's fucked up that I did that and you didn't deserve it. I don't really know you but I'm willing to say that you being the president of the student council means that you put a lot more care into your daily life than I do and are probably a better person than me." I shrugged. "Is that ying it on a little too thick? It's probably all true."

  "Don't say something like that. You're right when you say that we don't know each other," she said, sharply. It didn't take much thought before she was staring me down. It was different than before. I'm pretty sure that she has a resting imperious face, one that assured she had control of what she was walking into. It was kind of hot but it's attached to the rest of her personality. "I accept your apology, though I can't put too much of the bme on you. I can't say why but the situation was unfair to you too."

  Unsure of what to say, I shrugged again. "Thanks. Are you going to Lebnc? I'm pretty sure that your friend is there."

  "Are you talking about Haru-chan?"

  "Yeah." I pressed a palm against my head. "Sorry. People slip out of my head like water. I try to remember names, but I forgot what her st name was and didn't want to call her—"

  "Eep!"

  The two of us snapped over to a kid who was wearing our uniform. I use the term 'kid' because he looked like a newborn fawn despite probably only being a year younger than me. It may have looked endearing to certain people. I was all out of mercy after apologizing. Especially when the idiot was staring at us like we were twin pnes heading down for his stupid little bird brain. Seriously, where did the kids get off with that kind of stuff? They interrupt us having a conversation and then stand around like assholes.

  "Hey bud, what's the problem? You got something to say?" I asked.

  My tone apparently wasn't 'nice' enough because the kid's chin sucked inwards.

  Makoto took over. Maybe all the irritability was drained out of her by letting it out on me because her tone sounded downright inviting. "Why were you eavesdropping?"

  The kid's head was snapping between the two of us. "Are the t-two of you trying to figure out the riddle?"

  "Riddle?"

  "No. Kurusu-kun here merely had something to apologize for," Makoto said. Diplomatic, nice. The kind of gentle hand more fit for mothering a kid who scraped his arm.

  "The hell are you talking about 'riddle'?" I asked, maybe a little too forcefully.

  After letting out an extraordinarily quiet, "meep!" the kid started speed walking down the street. He kept checking over his shoulder like I was a lion herding him into my pride.

  Makoto looked over at me dully. "Really?"

  "It's his fault for being so jumpy."

  "You need to clean up your nguage."

  My first reaction was to try thinking of a reasonable retort. Then I actually thought that through. Ever since coming to Tokyo, I've been casually cursing in public way more. Screaming at Makoto may have been the first time I did it in my life. Remembering the times that I cursed around people brought a frown to my face. Being under a lot of stress did things to you.

  "A sh-shoot, you're right. I swear that I wasn't like this back home." I bashfully lowered my head slightly. "Still, riddle? What riddle is he talking about?"

  "You really don't know? I'll admit that we were inspired to come here because of it and found that coffee shop." The school president was trespassing onto my stomping ground because of a frivolous riddle. Turning to her for a response was enough that she self-consciously tilted her head away. "It was posted on the Phantom Thieves' fan site. Surely you at least know of its existence."

  "I've seen it. I just didn't think that you'd waste your time with it."

  "Haru-chan wanted to do it," she blurted out, way too quickly for it to be normal. I think she realized that it was strange to do since she continued quickly saying, "and I thought that it'd be a good exercise for…my mind."

  Guilty, I thought to myself. Guilty, guilty, guilty. The prim and proper student council president thought that riddles were fun and was doing an ARG meant for the Phantom Thieves.

  "Uh huh."

  "It's true." She said it like I could only be an idiot if I disagreed. Not as if I had any room to since she interrupted me when I opened my mouth. "So you really live out here?"

  "That's what I said."

  But wait, I thought to myself. Riddle? The Phantom Thieves site? One of the smartest people on campus getting some 'good exercise'? In a situation where she was softened up? When I wasn't even trying to manipute her?

  Everything felt too coincidental. My lips curled. I was the cat that caught the canary, the Enlightened Buddha, basically the most satisfied person in the world. And it had reinforced an errant thought that I had, one that was only growing the more that the week (from when I'd pretty much winged the entirety of the heist at Madarame's pace to then) was progressing. I think that you guys need a little more context before I unveil my grand thought.

  Instead let's remain firmly in the present. I tried smothering the smile so it didn't seem like I was mocking her. "Is that riddle why you were staring up there?"

  Maybe she immediately agreed to distance herself from the embarrassing reveal. "It's about the Stone Gate of Qufu. It mentioned that a girl who had 'flowing blonde twintails' looked underneath it. I'm sure that this is the pce that it meant since these stickers are strange enough that I'd never find them otherwise. What I can't figure out is where the number is supposed to be."

  "Number? Why would it be a number?"

  Half of this narration was supplied by Makoto giving me the answers with her own word. Right there underneath the next clue, Makoto exhaustively revealed every twist that led her there and the half-formed theories. Through giving Makoto little bits of mackerel, she continued getting more in-depth. Little 'oh,'s and 'I see's made her turn even more enthusiastic.

  "So you're thinking that the numbers are 8, 1, 03 or 0, 4, 9, and 3?"

  "Exactly!" She was so enthusiastic now that I had pegged her down as a puzzle fanatic. I've heard that these types of people existed but to see it in real life was kind of inspiring. Puzzles were simple pleasures that were done by our great-great-great squared by a hundredth ancestors. It's strange to see something so old still enjoyed. "Whew! I lost myself there for a second. Forgive me."

  "Nah, you're enthusiastic enough that I kind of want to see it completed now."

  And now genuinely thinking about the rest of it. Before there was absolutely no universe that I'd complete the poem. You kidding? All of this was hard! Having someone else do the burden of the harder stuff led me to the stuff that I already knew. Hearing the logic already led me to a route that Makoto couldn't understand. I looked up to the menagerie of stickers. Character, character, character, bridge, character, random numbers, a coke can, ta-da!

  "There."

  I was pointing to a cute girl with bobbed hair. She was smiling, eyes closed, shoulders pressed inwards. It was the pose that enchanted losers like me everywhere. Hey, I was a fan of her too. Not my favorite character but definitely in the top 3. 5. Definitely 5. Of that series. Maybe top 100 overall.

  "Her?" Makoto's eyes widened. "There's a 13 written on it!"

  "Hotaru-chan, a character from Sailor Moon. The poem was referring to Sailor Moon. If you hadn't watched that season then you would've been filtered." Or read the manga. I haven't. A controversial opinion in certain circles, but I found that the anime's style was way cuter.

  "So that means…"

  Not sure why she trailed off, but I filled in the gap. "8, 1, 03 or 3, 4, 9, 3, and 13. One down."

  Makoto pumped her fist. Have I mentioned that she had the most mannerisms that I've ever seen a person have? It's endearing. It's around 25% of the reason that I can stand being around her. "Yes! Only three more!"

  "Hope that you can get the rest. It's interesting but I've got things to do"

  She whipped around with a fire sparked in her eye. You wouldn't have guessed that we were gring at each other when passing by each other in the hallway st week.

  "Thank you very much, Kurusu-kun! I wouldn't have found this if you didn't tell me!"

  "No problem. Good luck finding the rest of the numbers. I'm going to go work out now."

  'Work out' was now transted into me-speak for 'doing supernatural stuff' unless I was actually 'working out'. That session of biking also became a session of 'doing supernatural stuff' because of my renewed chances. I knew more about the person who organized this ARG. If there needed to be some kind of confirmation, they were more of my demeanor than Makoto's. They were smarter than me too. This puzzle combined real world stuff with media. If I didn't recognize the other line then I'd say that they could've been normal, but anyone who knows about obscure foreign MMOs factually is not normal! They were just as willing to put in deep cuts alongside normie taste.

  Also as another discimer: this took the rest of the day past me working out. Some of you were about to think that I was super cool and solved this riddle within a single biking trip. Nope. Still the same idiot sitting in front of you.

  I broke apart the st lines that weren't solved: "She left without her heart but didn't fall apart. The adults disappeared as vacation began. Two Yggdrasil awoke. Then it died in Japan. I'm the monolith, the one clubbed, staring at you with each eye."

  The first line kind of sounded like it was either self-contained or referencing another part of the poem. 'Without her heart' could very well mean that the number there is 0. I couldn't figure out which and figured that punching in random numbers in the worst case scenario would work well enough.

  The second line was definitely referencing Yogurting. Thinking about it for even an extra second instantly gave me an idea. I'm assuming that the important line is that it died in Japan. Factually speaking, it did. The servers shut at some point because nobody pyed it. Looking that up when I was taking a drink break gave me a date: May, 2010. Not entirely sure about the exact day but hopefully that wasn't needed. Either the poem was asking for May, the exact number that they must've extracted from some dead wiki, or I'd have to walk around with my neck craned up like an idiot for another coincidental clue.

  So then came the final line. It sounded familiar and I didn't have to think too long before remembering that this person was a degenerate of some fvor, most likely a forum browser. Not that this was certain but I bet that the crossover of a hacker who likes anime and obscure games who didn't browse a forum might only consist of three people max.

  Forums of lesser popurity are known to have edgy humor. It almost made me chuckle. 'The one clubbed'. What's the common joke of something that gets clubbed? Cavemen carried them around, sure, but think more modern. Seals! Baby seals! For those who didn't know I'm not going to pause so you can act scandalized because we have our gigantic clue: monolith, seals, and eyes. Anybody who is anybody knows what this is referencing. Seal sounds like SEELE, the organization in Evangelion. They communicated through monoliths in most scenes. Their logo had eyes on it, though I didn't remember this until I looked it up. Either the puzzle was saying that there were 12 people in SEELE or that there were 7 eyes or I was meant to find something in real life with this evidence. I chose to believe the numbers. I hate ARGs, by the way.

  I didn't see any customers when coming back inside. Resting in my room after everything was done had my sore body feel like untangling on the bed. Students had been walking around the backstreets of Yongen-Jaya. Amateur cipher breakers apparently were having a field day with something that could be way more important than their weekend entertainment. I couldn't really hate them but it annoyed me. If it were actually a heart that needed to get stolen then these assholes were muddling the process.

  Putting in multiple possible numbers didn't give me anything. Something was wrong and I was betting it was the Yogurting reference. Makoto's logic sounded correct so I wanted to believe that the problem was on me. If the Yogurting line was meant to filter out the average joe then I was betting on it being the lynchpin of the whole puzzle.

  Walking felt horrible but I beared with it. I wandered around for a little. I breathed in deeply a lot. I bought a drink and drank it. I thought over the question. Numbers were everywhere. It was annoying. May, 2010. May, 2010. And it's then that I recognized something: all of these clues were around the area. That sticker spot most likely was only known by locals. What else could easily be hidden? I'd been by this spot a thousand times but felt like a stranger. Questioning it myself had me wandering around the tiny section of shops around Lebnc.

  It didn't take too long for me to find them. It's because I knew the area. I've been walking here for quite some time, you know. Everyday I'd walk. Everyday I would look around because I haven't had anything better to do since my only source of entertainment was my phone. Bringing me to closely look at things brought a bunch of new details. The telephone pole had a sticker really high next to a window where a person long ago probably spped it on. One of the walls nearby had a scrape running down its length from the top. There was a little bit of rainbow painted at the top corner of the building behind Lebnc. That Jewish symbol was graffitied inside a gutter. Someone had forgotten about their shirt and left it hanging on a clothesline for literal weeks. One corner smelled like baked goods. Another pce had a lock attached to it that must've come from before the dinosaurs.

  There's a home near Lebnc. There's a concrete sb below a gate. That gate nearly covered it up. Next to a child's handprint read 6th of May, 2010. The drink was crushed in my hand. It was dusk.

  I came at the tail end of Lebnc's final hour. There was a single customer there who I actually did recognize! She was somewhat of a regur and easy to pick out with her gray hair. Now if there were another youngish dy in the city who had gray hair then I'd be in trouble. I was comfortable in saying that this person was the same one who was a wyer, or w-something. Adjacent to the w. Not a person that I was friendly with and thus one who I was friendly with. Covering my bases, y'know? If the w is going to be around then you'd best make friendly with them. That's how I dealt with Akechi and everyone else dubiously attached to the w machine.

  Something was wrong though. I immediately knew that I wasn't supposed to be privy to this conversation. The wyer dy's eyes didn't stray but Sojiro immediately cut himself off mid-sentence. He'd been shouting. The way that his neck extended made it obvious that he was mad. She was under no obligation to be considerate. If I read her little smile right, then she was gd that we were there to witness it.

  "Your parental authority will have to be suspended. I take it you're okay with that outcome? Considering the state of your daughter and your family overall, there are no points in your favor. Would you like to take this to domestic court?"

  "Woah, woah, woah! What the hell's going on here?"

  You might remember that I just said to ingratiate yourself to coppers. I'm bad at taking my own advice. It's also impossible to sum up how smarmy that smile was. Punchable faces online really didn't transte to how horrible it was being in the presence of one.

  Whatever advantage she had with a witness didn't extend to me interrupting. With a slight gre, she said, "I'm sorry, but this matter doesn't concern you. Leave or stay quiet. It doesn't matter which."

  "And who the fuck are you to say that it doesn't concern me?" I stepped closer to her. The aggressiveness caught everybody, even me, off guard. "Who the fuck are you to tell me to be quiet where I live?"

  "Akira! That's enough!" Sojiro yelled.

  "What? Are you going to have some bitch walk in here like she owns the pce? Who the fuck are you to throw around threats like that?"

  "Somebody who is working with the city of Tokyo in an investigation. Stand down! You are interfering with an investigation."

  "What investigation?"

  "That's not information that I'm required to give out."

  "So you're just allowed to swing around your shitty authority like that without us even knowing about it? Oh, I heard what you were saying. Calling other people shitty parents. From your attitude you'd probably be the shittiest parent in Tokyo. Just the fucking worst."

  That was enough. Her face turned grave.

  "You don't know a thing about me."

  "I don't need to know shit about—"

  A fist smmed on the counter.

  "I said that's enough, Akira!"

  I was in her face. I could feel her breath. She could feel each of my heavy ones. One of her arms had stretched behind her.

  I stepped back. She was staring at me. I wasn't moving. A card smmed onto the counter.

  "When you're ready to talk about cognitive psience, then call this number. Otherwise I don't want to hear from this little corner of rejects."

  She walked out of the door and I was left with a gring Sojiro. I quickly calmed down once she was gone which let me realize what kind of situation I cornered myself in. Something that I learned was that Sojiro had some supernatural power to make me do stupid things in his vicinity. That's the only way I could expin how I continuously walked into these suffocating silences.

  I'd recently concluded that his gre was the resting bitch face that he had whenever staring at me. I can tell you that the face he was making during that moment was definitely a gre.

  "Akira—"

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" I said, actually putting my all into the bows towards him. "I'm a big stupid dumbass! I'm stupid!"

  The bowing may have been making me dizzy but I swore that he nearly seemed amused from my best impression of a woodpecker. Whatever mirage I'd seen was dispelled when I stopped. Instead I was in the presence of a grumpy man who was gring me down. The pce seriously felt like the spices were crawling down my throat at his bidding.

  With a heavy sigh, he waved his hand.

  "You really are—ugh, at times like this, it's really easy to see how you've gotten shackled over here, Kurusu-kun. You do know that you're on probation? Because you haven't acted like it a single day since you've gotten here! You've been acting like a casual delinquent whose entire future isn't hanging by the thread! Is there a single cell in that impulsive body of yours that knows how to hold your tongue? Hold yourself back? Not stray off towards the first distraction that flies in front of you face?" I thought it was a rhetorical question. "Huh!?"

  The sudden shout made me jump.

  "I-I-It, uh," because of how fast I was forced to respond, I really didn't have a good excuse and was pretty much spitting out sylbles, "is a, uh—"

  "It is a 'yes' or 'no' answer, Akira!" he yelled.

  "N-No. No, um, s-sir."

  I really wished that my mask was over my face. I could feel it burn the more that he stared.

  "You know that not every problem is your own? People have their own lives and they can handle them without having a kid screaming in anyone's face. It's more that their problems aren't necessarily your own. There are things that you can't do and there's things where having you around apparently becomes an active liability." He finally broke the stare to rub down his nose. "Am I going to have to worry about you screaming at rude customers? If there's going to be a person who doesn't pay his bill, are you going to run after them and beat their face in? This isn't how polite society works and I'm not afraid to kick you out if you do something like this again. I've tolerated everything else, Akira, beyond what I should have but this is enough. This is enough. If I let you continue acting like a loose cannon to people who're doing their jobs then I'm failing at my own side of this for letting it continue. This is how you've gotten here and what they're trying to fix. Everything that the adults are doing here is about fixing that attitude, and if it isn't getting fixed? You're going to the pound and you're not going to like how they're going to snip you."

  We did that thing where he gres at me thinking of what next he's going to tear apart. It's not like there's any shortage of fws for him to pick at. I stood still, as you do during this game. When he looked away and did something else, I stood there for a little while longer. Wading through made me feel like a stranger in my own room. Watering my sword fern didn't make me feel better.

  There was only one thing that he was wrong about. Other people's problems were my problems way too often.

  The glow from my screen lit up my face. My portal to the future. The name was double-checked by Googling it. I'd heard her before. I knew who she was. My phone did too.

  "Niijima Sae."

  Ding!

  No time was spent reveling in that. I assumed that the lines were also the order of the phone number or else I was completely porked. It had to be. They were trying to get the Phantom Thieves' attention, not the Japanese government's cypherologists. It had to be solvable enough for a group of dedicated normal people to do. My fingers worked across the keyboard to type in numbers: 81-03-1490-3337, 03-1490-3037, 81-1490-3312, 81-0-3149-0337 and various other numbers were tried. I typed out 'heart?' to each of them. I waited. I typed. I got responses. None of them sounded as if they knew.

  81-3-4913-0337.

  Me: <3

  Dots appeared below the keyboard. A message was sent.

  It was another stupid poem.