Volume #3 - EPISODE 7 - The Investigation Begins

VOLUME #3 - EPISODE 7

[NARRATOR: Some investigations happen in laboratories with microscopes and test tubes. Others happen in courtrooms with lawyers and judges. This one happens in a school library after hours, with four traumatized teenagers, three laptops, stolen financial records, and the growing certainty that they're being watched by people who've killed before and won't hesitate to kill again. Welcome to amateur detective work when the stakes are life and death. Welcome to the moment when truth-seeking becomes genuinely dangerous.]

The Library After Hours

Friday evening, 7 PM. Jeremy High's library should have been closed, locked, empty.

Instead, it held four figures hunched over a corner table surrounded by laptops, documents, and the particular tension that comes from knowing you're doing something simultaneously necessary and potentially fatal.

Riyura sat with his laptop open, scanning financial records that Sotsuko had somehow acquired—probably illegally, definitely comprehensively. His purple hair was messier than usual from running his hands through it, his yellow star hairclip hanging on by sheer stubbornness, his crooked bow tie completely abandoned hours ago.

[RIYURA'S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: This is insane. We're idiots. We should be studying for exams or arguing about anime or doing literally anything except investigating a murder-adjacent corruption network. But here we are. Because apparently when people fail to provide justice, fools have to step up.]

Beside him, Yakamira worked in focused silence, studying rows of financial records on his screen. His pale gray eyes followed the money as it moved through shell companies and offshore accounts. He hadn't learned forensic accounting for fun—he'd learned it to uncover the truth, and he was very good at it.

"I found something," Yakamira said, highlighting a transaction.

He angled the screen toward the others. "Three days before Jimiko's parents died, five hundred thousand yen was transferred from a shell company owned by a Hakizage family subsidiary into an account belonging to the drunk driver."

Jimiko leaned closer, the low light of the library casting shadows across his face. "That's not a lawyer's fee," he said slowly. "That's—" "A payoff," Sotsuko finished, his expression dark. "Either after the fact, or arranged beforehand. But either way, it means the crash wasn't an accident."

He brought up another file. "And the person who approved the transfer was my uncle—Letace, my father's older brother, and the family's chief financial officer."

The silence that followed was heavy with implication.

"Your uncle paid the idiot who killed my parents," Jimiko said quietly. Not angry. Not surprised. Just stating fact with the exhausted tone of someone whose worst suspicions were being confirmed.

"Yes," Sotsuko said, and something in his voice suggested this discovery hurt more than he was showing. "Which means the corruption isn't just professional network. It's family business. Literal family business."

Riyura's phone buzzed. A text from his mother, who was currently staying with relatives after being released from police questioning:

"They're freezing our assets. The house will be seized. I'm so sorry, Riyura. I should have been braver years ago. Should have chosen truth over comfort. This is all my fault."

Riyura typed back: "It's not your fault. It's his. And the system that protected him. We're going to make sure everyone responsible faces consequences. I love you, Mom."

He set the phone down and refocused on the documents, pushing away the guilt trying to creep in—the voice saying he'd destroyed his mother's life, that exposure wasn't worth this cost.

But then he thought about Takeshi Yamamoto. Five years old. Dead because someone was distracted and rich enough to avoid consequences. And he thought about Jimiko's parents. Dead because they'd discovered corruption and intended to expose it.

And he knew—absolutely knew—this was the right thing. No matter how much it hurt.

"We need to organize this better," Yakamira said, pulling up a new document. "Create a timeline. Map connections. Make it impossible to dispute."

For the next two hours, they worked in focused silence, broken only by occasional discoveries or frustrated sighs when connections proved elusive. The timeline grew:

12 Years Ago: Hakizage family establishes shell companies for "investment purposes" (actually money laundering for corruption network). 10 Years Ago: Riyura's father kills Takeshi Yamamoto, uses network to avoid consequences.

4 Years Ago: Jimiko's parents discover financial irregularities, plan to report → killed three days after payment to drunk driver from Hakizage holdings. 3 Years Ago: Lettace (Latace) begins developing memory manipulation technology, experiments on Jimiko to erase potential evidence.

6 Months Ago: Letace's obsession leads to incident at Jeremy High, arrest, imprisonment. Present: Sotsuko arrives to expose network, discovers Riyura's connection, forms unexpected alliance.

The pattern was clear. Damning. Exactly the kind of evidence that could bring down not just individuals but an entire system. It was also the kind of evidence that got people killed.

The Moment Everything Shifts

9 PM. The library's overhead lights flickered—they always flickered, Jeremy High's electrical system being held together by hope and duct tape—but this time the flicker felt different.

Deliberate. Riyura looked up from his laptop, instincts screaming danger before his conscious mind understood why. "Did you hear that?" he whispered.

"Hear what?" Jimiko asked, but his hand had already moved to his phone—ready to call for help if needed. A footstep. Soft. Careful. Coming from between the library shelves.

Someone was here. Someone who shouldn't be.

Yakamira stood slowly, positioning himself between the sound and his brother. Sotsuko's hand moved to his bag—Riyura didn't want to know what weapon he'd brought, but was grimly glad he'd thought to bring something.

"Who's there?" Sotsuko called out, his voice calm but carrying an edge sharp enough to cut. Silence. Then a figure stepped out from between the shelves.

A teacher. Middle-aged. Someone Riyura vaguely recognized from the mathematics department but whose name he'd never learned. "Working late, I see," the teacher said, his voice pleasant and completely wrong—like someone performing normalcy while planning violence.

"The library's closed," Yakamira said flatly. "You shouldn't be here."

"Neither should you," the teacher replied, walking closer. "Students aren't authorized for after-hours access. Especially not for—" His eyes flicked to the laptops, the documents spread across the table. "—for investigating matters that don't concern them."

Riyura's blood ran cold. "How long have you been watching us?"

"Long enough." The teacher's pleasant expression didn't change. "Long enough to see you've uncovered things that should stay buried. Long enough to inform certain interested parties that the investigation is more advanced than they'd hoped."

"You're part of the network," Jimiko said, not a question but a statement.

"I prefer to think of myself as a concerned educator protecting his students from dangerous activities." The teacher pulled out his phone. "Now, I'm going to have to ask you to hand over those documents. All of them. Physical and digital copies."

"No," Sotsuko said simply.

The teacher's smile widened, and suddenly it wasn't pleasant at all. "I wasn't actually asking. The people I work for—they don't respond well to being investigated by fools. They've already dealt with problematic individuals before. Jimiko's parents, for example. And they won't hesitate to—"

He didn't finish the sentence because Yakamira moved.

Fast. Faster than anyone expected. His hand shot out and grabbed the teacher's phone, yanking it away and throwing it across the library where it shattered against a bookshelf.

"Run," Yakamira said to the others. "Now." They ran.

The Chase Through Jeremy High

The hallways of Jeremy High at night were a different world—emergency lights casting everything in sickly green, shadows pooling in corners like spilled ink, their footsteps echoing with horror-movie acoustics.

Riyura's lungs burned as he ran, his bag bouncing against his back, laptops and documents secure but weighing him down.

Behind them, the teacher's footsteps followed—not running exactly, but walking with methodical certainty. Like someone who knew they'd catch up eventually and was savoring the anticipation.

"Where are we going?" Jimiko gasped beside Riyura. "Principal's office," Sotsuko said, leading them through familiar hallways. "Security cameras there. Phones that can for—"

He stopped abruptly. The hallway ahead was blocked. Another teacher. Also mathematics department. Also wearing that same pleasant-wrong expression.

"Going somewhere, students?" she asked sweetly. They spun. The other teacher had caught up, blocking the other direction. They were trapped.

[RIYURA'S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: This is bad. Really bad. These are killers. Workers who work for people who've killed before. Workers who probably have orders to stop us by any means necessary. And we're just fools. Just clumsy fools trying to do the right thing. How did this become our responsibility? How did—]

"The rooftop," Yakamira said urgently as he just caught up with the group. Sneaking from behind to join Riyura and the others. "Emergency stairs. Third floor. Go!" They bolted for the stairwell, the teachers following with increasing speed now that pretense was unnecessary.

Up the stairs. Two flights. Three. Bursting through the rooftop door into freezing winter night air.

The rooftop where so much had already happened at Jeremy High. Where Letace had nearly killed Shoehead. Where Riyura and Yakamira had fought and reconciled. Where every major crisis seemed to inevitably converge.

They stood near the edge, backs to the chain-link fence, the four of them facing the stairwell door where the teachers would emerge any second. "Call the police," Riyura said, pulling out his phone.

"Already did," Jimiko replied, his phone pressed to his ear. "Reporting intruders, threats against us that are—" The rooftop door burst open.

Both teachers stepped through, and now they weren't even pretending to be pleasant. Their expressions held cold calculation that suggested they'd made decisions about acceptable losses.

"Last chance," the first teacher said. "Hand over the evidence. Walk away. Forget what you've discovered. Or—" "Or what?" Sotsuko asked, his voice dangerous. "You'll kill us? Here? At school? With police already on the way?"

"Accidents happen," the second teacher said. "Students break into school after hours, go to rooftop, tragic fall occurs. Who would question it? Jeremy High has a history of rooftop incidents."

She stepped closer.

"Four troubled fools like you. All with documented trauma. All under stress from recent revelations about family corruption. Suicide pact seems plausible. Tragic. But plausible."

Riyura felt ice in his veins. They were serious. Actually serious about killing them and staging it as suicide.

"You won't get away with this," Jimiko said, his voice shaking but determined. "We've already sent copies of everything to law enforcement. To journalists. To people you can't touch. Killing us changes nothing."

"It sends a message," the first teacher said. "To anyone else thinking about investigating. About exposing what should stay hidden." They were close now. Too close.

Riyura pressed his back against the fence, feeling metal dig into his shoulders, nowhere left to retreat. This was it. The moment where truth-seeking became genuinely fatal.

Unless—

When Shadows Become Saviors

The rooftop door burst open again. But this time, it wasn't enemies.

Principal Jeremy Poleheadedsandwich strode through, flanked by security guards and—shockingly—several police officers who'd apparently been on campus already for follow-up questioning to.

"That's far enough," Principal Jeremy said, his butler-like composure replaced with something steel-hard and genuinely authoritative. "Step away from the students. Now."

The two teachers froze, their calculated cruelty cracking into panic as they realized their plan had completely collapsed. "We were just—" the second teacher started.

"We have cameras on this rooftop," Principal Jeremy interrupted coldly. "Installed after the Letace Brain incident and many after. We've recorded everything. The threats. The implication of involvement in previous deaths after to. All to stop grim incidents like this one. And so far, it has worked."

He gestured to the police officers.

"Officers, I believe these two individuals just confessed to conspiracy to commit murder. Along with knowledge of previous crimes. I suggest you arrest them immediately."

The police moved with professional efficiency, handcuffs appearing, rights being read, the teachers' protests falling on ears that had heard everything they needed to hear.

Riyura collapsed against the fence, legs giving out from adrenaline crash. Yakamira was beside him instantly, somehow not hurt basically at all, even though he just came back from fighting the first teacher earlier to get away and when he was holding him back in the libary earlier to. Holding Riyura up. Jimiko and Sotsuko stood nearby, both looking shaken but grimly satisfied.

"How—" Riyura started, his voice hoarse.

"Security alerted me that students were in the library after hours," Principal Jeremy explained. "And when I saw who else had entered the building—staff members with documented connections to families under investigation—I called the police immediately."

He looked at the four of them seriously. "You could have died tonight. You understand that, yes? These people were genuinely planning to kill you." "We know," Sotsuko said quietly. "But we also knew the risk when we started investigating. Some truths are worth dying for."

"No truth is worth people dying for," Principal Jeremy said firmly. "That's what people are supposed to handle. That's what the justice system is supposed to provide."

"The justice system failed," Jimiko said, his voice small but steady. "For ten years for Riyura. For four years for me. At some point, when others fail, someone has to step up. Even if that someone is just idiots with laptops and stolen documents."

Principal Jeremy sighed—long and heavy. "You're right. And that's the tragedy. You shouldn't have to be right." The police escorted the arrested teachers away. More officers arrived to secure the scene, take statements, collect evidence.

And four traumatized teenagers sat on the cold rooftop under winter stars, having survived their first genuine murder attempt, knowing it probably wouldn't be their last.

"We're not stopping," Riyura said into the quiet. "You know that, right? This just proves we're onto something real. Something dangerous. Something that needs to be exposed no matter the cost."

"I know," Yakamira said. "Same," Jimiko agreed. "Obviously," Sotsuko added. They sat in silence for a moment longer, letting the adrenaline fade, letting reality settle back into something manageable.

Then Riyura pulled out his phone and texted his mother:

"Almost died tonight. Teachers tried to kill us to protect the network. We're okay though, so there's no need to worry Mom. Police got them. But Mom? This is bigger than we thought. Bigger than Dad's crime. This goes everywhere. And we're going to expose all of it. I love you. Stay safe."

The response came quickly: "I'm so sorry. So sorry I didn't protect you from this. Be careful. Please be careful. And Riyura? I'm proud of you. Terrified. But proud."

He smiled—small, sad, genuine. His mother was proud. That was something.

[NARRATOR: And so the investigation nearly ends before it truly begins. Murder attempt thwarted. More evidence gathered. More connections to the network exposed. But also: escalation confirmed. These people will kill to protect their secrets no matter the cost. Which means Riyura, Jimiko, Sotsuko, and Yakamira are now in genuine danger. Constantly. Until the network falls or they do. Next episode: they discover the corruption reaches into Jeremy High's administration itself. Trust becomes impossible. Paranoia becomes survival. And the question shifts from "will we expose this" to "will we survive long enough to expose this."]

TO BE CONTINUED...

[NEXT EPISODE: "Sotsuko's Weakness" - The investigation continues with increased police protection. But they discover corruption within law enforcement itself. Trust fractures. Sotsuko's strategic mind begins seeing threats everywhere. And Jimiko becomes the only person who can pull his cousin back from the edge before calculated strategy becomes paranoid violence. The line between justice and revenge blurs dangerously.]