Detective 2

"What am I missing?" Isagi muttered, sitting at his cluttered desk. The morning light had already faded, and he had been up for hours, combing through reports, old investigation notes, and any loose thread he could find. Yet something was still nagging at him.

Isagi tapped his fingers on the keyboard, eyes scanning the information in front of him. The money trail was undeniable — millions of dollars had been funneled to a Russian account, and the timing of it all seemed too perfect. Too clean. "Why now?" he whispered, shaking his head. "Why during Russia's economic crisis?"

He couldn't shake the thought that something wasn't right. He had looked at the facts from every angle, but one thing continued to bother him.

His phone buzzed, breaking his concentration. A message from Ryota popped up: "Did you look into the students? They're connected somehow."

Isagi frowned, remembering the strange hotel check-in record he'd come across earlier. A group of students, some of them reportedly active on social media. That was an interesting lead.

He quickly pulled up the hotel records. There it was — a group of students who checked in the night before the attack. The receptionist had mentioned something about one of them being a TikToker. A sudden idea sparked in his mind.

"Students. TikTokers. If they were at the scene of the attack, maybe they recorded something."

A few hours later, Isagi was standing at the front desk of a small hotel, the receptionist looking at him with a mixture of boredom and curiosity.

"How can I help you, sir?" she asked, barely glancing up from her screen.

"I'm investigating a group of students who stayed here recently," Isagi said, flashing his badge. "I just need a few details."

The receptionist perked up slightly. "Oh, you mean that TikToker kid? Yeah, I remember them. He was always running around, doing his little skits. It was kind of annoying, honestly."

"TikToker?" Isagi raised an eyebrow. "Do you remember his name?"

"Uh, I think it was Mark. Something like that." She paused. "His friends were with him, too. But, honestly, that kid was the loudest."

"Do you have any footage of them? Maybe something from their check-in or when they left?"

The receptionist pulled up the security footage from the lobby. As Isagi watched, he noted the students' faces, but something about one of them caught his attention. He jotted down the details of their activities before moving on.

Back at his desk, Isagi did some quick searching on Marks's social media. It didn't take long to find his TikTok account — a series of comedic skits and, unsurprisingly, a few videos on the train.

One of the recent videos caught his eye. The camera panned across the train car, showing Tetsuya making one of his usual jokes, but as the camera zoomed in, something strange stood out.

Isagi froze the frame.

In the background, he could see a group of people arguing — and among them, there was a figure who looked familiar, standing calmly in the midst of the argument.

No. It couldn't be.

Isagi leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. The figure seemed to be taking control of the situation, talking to the group, keeping things from escalating. But something was off. The person's face was completely blurry.

"How is that possible?" Isagi muttered, rewinding the footage. His heart started to race. This wasn't a coincidence.

Determined to get to the bottom of it, Isagi picked up the phone and dialed Ryota.

"Hey," Ryota answered groggily, "you find something?"

"I need the CCTV footage from the train station," Isagi said, urgency in his voice. "All of it. I need every angle, every camera that covered the train and the platform around the time of the incident."

"You sure about this?" Ryota replied, his tone now more alert. "You're looking for something specific?"

"I think the students know more than they're letting on. I just need to confirm something. It could be crucial."

Ryota paused for a moment, then sighed. "Fine. I'll get it for you. It'll take a bit of time."

"Thanks." Isagi hung up, his mind racing. The blurry face in the video — it couldn't be a coincidence. Whoever it was, they were deliberately keeping their identity hidden. But why?

It took longer than expected, but later that evening, Ryota dropped off a flash drive onto Isagi's desk.

"Here it is," Ryota said, his voice serious. "But if you find what you're looking for, don't tell me. I don't want to be involved."

Isagi nodded without saying a word. He plugged the flash drive into his computer and started scanning the footage.

The CCTV footage showed crowded platforms, people rushing for trains, and the usual bustle of city life. He fast-forwarded through the footage, looking for anything that stood out, anything that matched the blurry figure he had seen earlier.

Then, finally, it appeared.

The figure — the same one from the TikTok video — stepped off the train, walking calmly among the passengers. Isagi's heart skipped a beat. This was it. This was the lead he'd been looking for.

But again, every time the camera captured his face, it was distorted. There was no clear identification, no recognition — just the same, unexplainable blur.

Isagi cursed under his breath.

He kept watching, the footage playing on loop. Then, a few frames later, he saw something even more disturbing. The figure was talking to a tall person in black — someone who was clearly armed with a large weapon.

"Who the hell is that?" Isagi whispered, his fingers pausing on the keyboard. The person seemed to be hidden in the shadows, but it was clear they were carrying a machine gun.

Isagi zoomed in. This wasn't a normal exchange. This wasn't just some coincidence. Was this person involved in the attack? Or were they just another piece of a much bigger puzzle?

"Ryota," Isagi muttered, his mind racing. "I need more footage. I need everything you've got from the attack itself."

"Again?" Ryota's voice crackled over the phone.

"I need to see the attack from every angle," Isagi said, not pausing for a second. "There's something bigger going on here. I can feel it."

Isagi sat back in his chair, staring at the blurry figure on the screen. His mind was spinning. Was this connected to the attack? Had this figure been involved in the incident? Why were their features blurred out every time they appeared on camera?

The more he looked at it, the more he became convinced that this wasn't a random series of events. There was something carefully planned behind it all, and the answers were buried somewhere in these recordings.

He needed more.

With a deep breath, Isagi picked up the phone again. "Ryota, I'm going to need all the footage from the attack. Everything. And don't leave anything out."

Ryota was silent for a moment, then gave a reluctant sigh. "Alright. I'll send it to you. But Isagi, you might be getting yourself too deep in this. Be careful."

Isagi stared at the screen, his pulse quickening.

As the call ended, he sat in the dark room, waiting for the next set of recordings that might give him the answers he so desperately needed.