36)An eye on the traitor

The light sound of the wind blowing through the kitchen window seemed to tease secrets, but the heavy silence inside stifled everything. Eyes were watching, and breaths were held.

Ryuichi's features froze in place. He unconsciously bit his lip, his fingertips trembling as he brushed his hair aside, trying to keep his composure. His insides were boiling... Miku's words were shocking enough to throw him off balance:

"I found out who's been messing with Aura."

Natsumi's quick glance at him was not without question, but she didn't speak. She watched his reaction like a silent judge.

Aura, inside his mind, began to mimic him very quietly:

Aura:

"Ryuichi, calm down... She didn't say your name. Maybe she meant someone else... Don't give her a clue with your behavior."

Ryuichi clenched his fist slightly under the table, then lifted his gaze lazily, feigning a faint smile.

Miko said, nodding lightly:

"Ryuichi, is everything all right? You look pale all of a sudden."

He replied in a raspy voice:

"Uh... No, it's nothing. Just... The surprise of your last sentence confused me."

Miku said with a slight smile:

"The game seems to have achieved its goal."

Natsumi laughed, trying to ease the tension, but her eyes still stared at Ryuichi, noticing every detail.

Then suddenly the miko got up and walked over to the sink, saying in a meek but suggestive tone:

"Sometimes... Some answers are not said, they are understood."

As she washed her hands, she glanced at Ryuichi through the mirrored glass of the window and whispered without turning around:

"But don't worry... I won't reveal everything."

Ryuichi shuddered inside, and Aura tried her best to calm him down, but she sensed that danger was getting closer to them than expected...

There was silence for a few heavy seconds after the miko announced that she had figured out who had been messing with Aura. Ryuichi's features tensed, and sweat seemed to trickle down his forehead, despite the cold weather. He couldn't keep quiet any longer.

He said in a tone tinged with concern:

"Who is it? I want to know... Who dared to tamper with it?"

Then he added, trying to control his temper:

"If you know, don't keep it to yourself."

Natsume, no less perplexed, agreed:

"Yes, if someone is tampering with technology like this, we need to find out who it is, it's a danger to everyone."

Miku looked at them without changing her expression, then shook her head gently:

"I won't say."

Both were shocked, and Natsumi took a step forward, a tone of surprise in her voice:

"Why?! This is no time for mystery, miko!"

Miku sighed audibly, then slowly said:

"At first... I thought it was Ryuichi."

Natsumi's eyebrows rose in outright shock, and she exclaimed:

"What?! That idiot? He can't even update his programs without blowing something up!"

Ryuichi looked at the ground, growing redder, as he muttered:

"Really... You doubted me?"

The miko smiled lightly, despite the tension, then continued seriously:

"But I realized that it was bigger than you... And that you, in a way, were the target, not the perpetrator."

There was a moment of silence, before she added in an emphatic tone:

"The real person... I will keep his name to myself. Now is not the time to reveal it."

Ryuichi's features froze at Miku's last words. But he wasn't the only one shocked... Inside his mind, immediately, Aura's voice rang out in a stunned tone:

> "Impossible... No one else has reached my main core, Ryuichi. You're the only one who broke through those layers... Who is this person you're talking about?"

Ryuichi felt slightly dizzy. He stared at the miko as if she had become a walking puzzle.

> "Unbelievable... Aura, is there a possibility... that someone was watching us, even during the moments I was communicating with you?"

Aura answered in a low voice as if she was thinking out loud:

"If so... it means that someone has my vision and tracking technology, or perhaps even surpasses it... That's a risk I hadn't considered."

Ryuichi swallowed hard and stared into space, muttering:

"Who is he, and how did he manage to reach Aura's entity without leaving a trace?"

At this moment, Natsumi noticed his absentmindedness:

"Ryuichi, are you okay?"

He nodded slowly as he tried to regain his composure:

"I'm just... shocked by what Miku said."

But inside he was seething. Fear, worry, and doubt were crashing into his head like a relentless storm. There was an answer... But he didn't have the clues yet.

"Aura... We are in more danger than we thought."

The silence was deafening.

The distant whispers of Miku and Natsumi's breathing reached Ryuichi's ears in the background, but his mind had been completely pulled into another orbit... one that began when Miku uttered her sentence that shook his very being:

> "At first I thought it was Ryuichi's doing to mess with Aura... But I was wrong."

He was trying to look normal, to keep his facial muscles still, to keep his confused gaze from giving him away... but his heart?

His heart was screaming.

As Aura dived into the depths of her digital systems, searching for any trace of the "other" who had tampered with them without her knowledge, she was interrupted by a faint flash in the corner of the smartglass interface on Ryuichi's eyes.

Aura asked in a concerned tone:

"Would you like me to open it, Ryuichi? It's of unknown origin."

He hesitated for a second, then said in a hushed tone:

"Open it... Let's see what's behind it."

The video streamed directly onto the optical lenses of his glasses, and the image was clear:

Suzuni.

Lying down.

Her body almost naked.

Still as a corpse in the dim light of an unknown room.

Suppressed in a sleep that her mind did not choose.

At the bottom of the video, in clear, unmistakable handwriting:

> "If you don't want this image to be published... do as you are told."

Time shattered.

The moment fell from above and shattered.

An internal inferno swept over him without warning.

Aura whispered, as if fighting an earthquake in her digital core:

"Ryuichi... did you... see what I saw?"

He didn't respond immediately.

His eyes widened as if he had witnessed the end.

Then he whispered, as if his heart had spoken those words instead of his tongue:

"Yes... I saw it. Oh my God... what the hell... who would do such a thing...?"

Aura was silent for a moment, then replied in a low, panicked voice:

"This person... knows your weaknesses. He knows who Suzuni is to you. He knows Aura. He knows you, inside."

He felt like the walls were closing in.

As if his soul was being suffocated under the weight of a single question echoing through his consciousness:

"Who is messing with me... Who is this shadow that has invaded my world without me seeing it?"

Then suddenly, Aura muttered, as if trying to cling to a thread of hope:

"I will search. I will dig. I'll go back to all my previous paths, to my oldest archives... I must find a trace of this intruder."

But Ryuichi knew...

This letter wasn't just a threat.

It was a declaration of war.

As Ryuichi sat with Miku and Natsume, the echoes of "Truth or Lies" still hanging in the air, his features suddenly changed; his eyes widened, and his hand holding the glass of water froze, as if a bolt of lightning had struck him at an unexpected moment.

Mikiko, who immediately noticed the change, leaned toward him with concern:

"Ryuichi... what's wrong, are you okay?"

Natsumi also notices the tension in his face:

"Did something happen? You look pale all of a sudden."

Ryuichi didn't answer... his glasses flickered with a faint pulse, before a new alert appeared on her lens... Aura, inside him, started anxiously:

"Ryuichi... a new message from the same number."

He didn't wait long. With worried eyes and a racing heart, he allowed Aura to open the message.

The poisoned words unfolded before him:

> "Speak, and you will lose everything. The photo is just the beginning. We have more recordings... of Suzuni... in compromising positions. One word, and we will unleash her."

Time froze. Ryuichi's breath grew heavy, his face grew paler, and even his voice failed him. He was about to speak up, to ask for help... but the threat stifled all will within him.

Aura whispered inside him in a soft voice, tinged with terror:

"I saw... I saw what I saw... This is a real threat, Ryuichi... and we are in danger."

He swallowed hard, then looked at Miku and Natsumi, who continued to watch him with growing concern.

He opened his mouth to say something... then hesitated. He shook his head and said in a hushed voice:

"No... nothing. I just... remembered something annoying."

But inside, the storm was already rumbling.

With an artificial calm and a faint smile on his face, Ryuichi turned to Miku and Natsume after regaining some of his composure:

"I think I need a little rest now... a long and tiring day. Would you mind heading to your room? I'll close the kitchen and catch up with you later."

They looked at him quizzically, but Natsumi was the first to smile and shrug her shoulders:

"It's okay... just don't sleep here at the table."

Mikiko followed with a worried look but respected his decision:

"Well, if you need anything... we're there."

As soon as Ryuichi closed the door to Natsume's room, his features shifted, and his back fell against the door as if the weight of the world had been dropped on him all at once.

His voice came out strained as he addressed Aura:

"What the hell is going on? Who is this person? And why Suzuni?"

Aura, her voice calm despite the concern in her tone:

"The data in the message is well encrypted... there's no direct trace of the sender, but... this is an organized threat. We need to proceed with caution."

Ryuichi walked with heavy steps to his bed, sat on the edge, and buried his face in his hands. His thoughts are jumbled, the real danger is approaching, and he has no idea what to do.

Suddenly...

A faint buzz from his smart glasses, followed by a new message appearing in front of his eyes. Aura immediately picked it up, displaying its contents on the screen:

> "Tomorrow, 4pm. Facility 09, behind the abandoned factories in the eastern sector. Be there alone... or the images will start leaking."

Ryuichi's throat went dry.

He whispered to himself as if hearing a nightmare:

"Facility 09...?"

Then he looked up, his face taut, full of doubt and fear:

"This is no ordinary threat... it's a trap."

Aura's voice, this time with a decisive tone:

"And yet... we have no choice but to face it."

Inside Natsume's room, where the silence is heavy, Aura sits analyzing the data from the encrypted messages he received. Her digital buttons glowed in a repetitive pattern, repeatedly trying to trace the source of the threats, but hitting a wall of obscurity, with no clear or publicized trail.

Aura then asked in a low voice as if trying to get the truth out of the letters:

"Who could be behind all this?"

At that moment, Ryuichi stopped deep in thought, and one last memorable image from college flashed through his mind, the sight of Suzuni talking cautiously with Nakamura, their expression full of tension and mystery.

His eyes opened wide, and Aura's silence was broken when he whispered:

"Nakamura..."

In an iconic moment, Ryuichi turned toward the window and began to put all the pieces together, realizing that this was the beginning of the unraveling of the larger mystery, and that Nakamura was now the number one suspect in this game.

Ryuichi and Aura exchanged thoughtful glances, and then Aura said in a steady tone:

"Nakamura was the last person to see Suzuni in college, and that makes him the most likely suspect."

Ryuichi smiled bitterly and said:

"So, could he be the second manipulator of your data, the one who tampered with Aura herself?"

Aura hesitated for a moment before answering cautiously:

"That possibility exists, but it's not entirely logical. Nakamura doesn't have the ability or obvious motive to do such complex tampering. However, I can't completely dismiss the suspicion, as some things are still mysterious."

The atmosphere was charged with the tension of a theory that began to unfold like dominoes, each event leading to the next in a tangled chain that made Nakamura the center of their attention, despite the doubts that still surrounded him.

Ryuichi left the room and headed toward the kitchen with lumbering steps, his heart beating unusually fast and his mind teeming with unanswered questions. He saw Miku quietly washing the dishes, the water running between her fingers as if trying to erase her worries, but her eyes caught his immediately.

Ryuichi stopped a few steps away and stood for a moment, unable to express all that was on his mind. Finally he said in a hesitant but serious voice:

"Miku, can I... Can I talk to you?"

Miko lifted her head and looked at him with a slight smile, trying to calm his nerves, but feeling the weight of the moment as well.

"Sure, what's up?" She asked in a soft voice.

Ryuichi sat in the chair opposite, trying to catch his breath, and then hesitantly began to speak:

"I... I need to know who tampered with Aura's system. I need to understand... Who could it be?"

Mikiko took a deep breath and nodded slightly, then replied softly:

"Ryuichi, this is a very sensitive subject, and it's not easy to reveal it so quickly. There are things I can't talk about right now."

Feeling pressure building in his chest, Ryuichi tried to convince her:

"But Miku, you told me before that you know who did this... Please, just a little clarity."

Miko sighed, and hesitated slightly, trying to choose her words:

"It's not the right time, and you know there's more to this than you realize. I can't risk revealing everything now."

Ryuichi was silent for a moment, then, with many possibilities running through his mind, he finally asked her with increasing boldness:

"Is it Nakamura? Is he the one who's been messing with the system?"

The miko turned slowly and didn't answer the question directly, making Ryuichi's heart grow tense and stunned. Her silence was enough of an answer to make the questions jostle in his head, and he knew it was no longer far from the truth she was trying to hide.

They sat there in tense silence, the atmosphere around them charged with secrets waiting to be revealed, while Ryuichi continued to dive into a sea of questions with no clear shoreline.