The next morning following the confrontation brought a heavy silence to the White Frost Empire. Naea woke up and, for the first time in a long while, skipped her morning exercise. After freshening up, she walked into the kitchen to prepare breakfast, only to be greeted by the sight of the empty wine bottle. It stood there as a silent witness to the previous night, triggering a flood of memories: Akira's raw confession and that steady, grounding whisper—"I trust you." Naea shook off the thoughts, focusing instead on cooking egg fried rice and brewing coffee. But as she sat down to eat, her phone vibrated with a call from her mother.In Osaka, Naea's family usually respected her grueling surgical schedule, but the desperation in her mother's voice .
"Naea... Isamu is missing," her mother's sobbing voice broke through the line, causing the her grip on the coffee mug tightened significantly . There hasn't been a single trace of him since last night. Your Aunt and Uncle are in a state of total collapse. The police are reporting that between ten to twenty teenagers have vanished from Osaka over the past two weeks... and now, Isamu is one of them." Isamu Sato was the youngest, most cherished member of their family, the one everyone looked up to with protective affection. Swallowing the lump in her throat , Naea steadied her voice to comfort her mother. "Mom, please don't worry. We will find Isamu. I was already planning to take a leave of absence from the hospital anyway, so I'll be on a train today and should reach Osaka by this evening.""Closing the line with her mother, Naea took a deep breath before dialing Dr. Taki. She didn't lead with the tragedy; instead, she simply told him she needed to take her leave to be with her family. There was a vulnerability in her request that she rarely showed, a silent admission that even the strongest surgeon has a breaking point. She needed the comfort of her home in Osaka to ground her soul before it drifted too far away."
"Dr. Taki's voice came through the receiver with a gentle, knowing smile. 'You've made a wise choice, Naea. A surgeon who cannot find peace at home cannot find precision in the theater. Go, give your family the time they deserve.' With his blessing secured, Naea's hands moved swiftly across her phone screen to book the 1:00 PM departure. The transition from grieving doctor to a sister on a mission had begun; she moved through her apartment like a whirlwind, she was leaving her apartment, casting a single, unreadable glance at Apartment 42—Akira's home—before catching a cab to the station.packing her life into a single bag, driven by the ticking clock and the haunting image of Isamu's empty room."
On the other side of the city, Akira was drowning in a different kind of turmoil. Sleep had been impossible. She felt a suffocating pressure, as if someone were physically tightening a grip around her throat. Driven by a restless energy,she took her car and drove through the empty streets at breakneck speed, her windows down to let the cold night air numb her thoughts. She retreated to her office, unlocking the building and burying herself in the Crimson Canvas files. By 6:00 AM, she hadn't moved an inch, her eyes bloodshot but refusing to close. She ordered a triple-shot coffee to stave off the exhaustion. When the guards arrived at 7:00 AM, they were startled to see her cabin lights on, only to be dismissed by her trademark cold, professional tone. "When Macau arrived at eight—thirty minutes before the rest of the team—she found Akira already entrenched in her cabin, a ghost haunting her own office. The air was thick with the scent of stale caffeine and cold focus. Scattered across the desk were pages upon pages of notes, evidence of a mind that had refused to sleep, dissecting every micro-detail of the Crimson Canvas case. Macau didn't need to ask; the sight of those trembling coffee cups told her enough. Something had broken inside Akira last night. Without looking up, Akira slid a folder toward her, her voice a chilling monotone that brooked no argument. 'Culprits. All of them. Get me the names now.'
Just as the tension in the office reached its peak, Mr. Nawikama, a senior official from the Osaka Prosecution Department, made an unexpected entrance. Despite her exhaustion, Akira immediately stood up out of professional respect to greet him.
"How is the Crimson Canvas case progressing?" Mr. Nawikama inquired, his eyes scanning the cluttered desk.
"We are very close to closing it, sir," Akira replied, her voice clipped and colder than usual, masking the emotional turmoil beneath the surface.
Mr. Nawikama placed a thick, heavy file in front of her with a solemn expression. "There is a new crisis in Osaka. Twenty teenagers have vanished without a trace over the last two weeks. We've exhausted every lead, but we're coming up empty. The only lead we have is that these children are being held somewhere here, in Tokyo. The Osaka department wants you to get to the root of this. I know you're the only one who can solve this."
Akira opened the file, and as the gravity of the situation sank in, her team—Macau and the others—immediately descended upon the new evidence with intense focus. For the first time, Akira pushed the Crimson Canvas files to the side. She and her team spent the next several hours in total immersion, meticulously analyzing every byte of data and every witness statement, determined to find a pattern in the chaos.As Akira analyzed the new file, she noted the pattern—teenagers aged 13 to 17 lured by mysterious messages. Her eyes scanned the list of names: Ryu, Itashi, Sui, Mika... and then she stopped. Isamu Sato. The surname "Sato" flashed like a warning light, instantly bringing Naea to mind, though she forced herself to remain objective for the investigation. Akira immediately pivoted her team's priority to the missing youths. They spent the next twelve hours decoding digital footprints and luring techniques .The investigation began in a state of clinical, high-stakes frenzy. Akira sat at the head of the conference table, her presence commanding and absolute, despite the fact that she hadn't slept for a single second due to the previous night's confession and her lingering restlessness. She was the first to pick up Isamu Sato's file. "This is the latest case," she told Macau and the rest of the team, her cold voice echoing through the cabin. "The trail here is still fresh. We need to decode Isamu's digital footprints to find the 'common denominator' that the Osaka police overlooked."
Under Akira's direct supervision, the team launched a "Deep-Dive Metadata Analysis" of Isamu's phone and social media accounts. Akira noticed that exactly forty-eight hours before Isamu vanished, there had been a massive spike in encrypted interactions on his messaging app. When Macau analyzed these data packets, they discovered a linguistic "telltale"—the predator had used a specific type of gaming slang to communicate with Isamu, a tactic perfectly designed to gain a teenager's trust.
Akira then had a Digital Heat Map projected onto the large glass screen in the office. She observed that the signal from Isamu's phone before it went dead, along with the last active signals of the other nineteen teenagers, followed an identical pattern.
"This predator isn't snatching children at random," Akira noted, pointing toward the screen. "They are performing psychological profiling. Isamu was targeted because he was the 'missing piece' for this week." For the next twelve hours, the team tirelessly peeled back layer after layer of digital encryption. By 7:00 PM, Akira had narrowed the digital signal down to a specific server farm located in the industrial outskirts of Tokyo. As she closed the file, Akira's gaze lingered once more on Isamu's photograph. She remained completely unaware that the brother of the woman she adored was the very victim she was hunting for, while Naea was currently on a train to Osaka, searching for the same answers Akira had just uncovered in Tokyo.The day ended in a hollow silence. Akira drove Macau to a restaurant for dinner, but she didn't utter a single word, her expression a frozen mask of cold professionalism. Macau could only wonder what had happened the night before to transform Akira into this version of herself—emotionless and unreachable. As they finally returned home to sleep, Akira remained completely unaware that the woman she "adored" was already miles away, heading straight into the heart of the danger they were both now hunting.