"So tired—"
Karasawa yawned into the mirror.
His body felt like it had been wrung dry, but he still had to hike back to the café, sneak into hiding again to spend forever cutting up newspaper clippings into a decent calling card, figure out a way to get it delivered, all while making sure Rei Furuya didn't catch on—because the second this hit the news, he'd be exposed. A premature career death before the startup even launched.
So when the café finally closed and he watched Furuya leave, there was something almost paternal in the relief in his eyes.
Knowing someone out there was even more exhausted than he was—that alone lifted his spirits.
In the mirror, the young man wore a double-breasted short tailcoat on top, with knee-length shorts below. A scarf floated behind him, softly defying gravity, lending the whole ensemble an out-of-season, dreamlike elegance.
But the most ridiculous part had to be the mask.
"This is what they call a mask?" Karasawa leaned closer to the mirror and poked at it. "This is just a blindfold, come on."
His upper face was covered by a smooth, semi-circular visor—no eye holes in sight.
What was this, a budget 9S cosplay?
He had no idea what kind of tech—or magic—was making this work, but one thing was clear: the mask—fine, let's call it a mask—didn't block his vision at all from the inside. From the outside, though, it looked like someone had tied a sleek blindfold over his eyes.
After poking at the mask for a while, then inspecting the gently wafting scarf, Karasawa finally exited Phantom Thief Mode.
All in all, he'd gained a new outfit with a one-click transformation option.
And one that let him show up in the real world in full Phantom Thief gear—plus, it covered his striking eyes. That alone was enough to count as a whole new disguise.
All good things. Every last one.
Karasawa folded his arms over his chest like a mummy and fell asleep with an air of profound serenity.
Now there was just one thing left to do: time to find Lyon in the dream world and give him a proper interrogation.
——
While Karasawa was off frolicking in dreamland, plenty of people in the waking world were very much not asleep.
On the street outside the Maru family estate, the neighborhood buzzed with hushed speculation.
No one dared gather outright, not with the head of the Maru family known for his temper, but the situation demanded attention—someone had plastered the outer walls with printed notices and scattered little cards all over the street.
Low murmurs of chanting filled the air.
"'To the vile soul consumed by Greed: Maru Tsunesaburō.'" A woman paused at the corner of the alley, leaning in to read one of the posters.
"You exploit the desperate with your wealth, trample their dignity, and grind their hard-won treasures and labor into the dust. We know all of it—every shameless act." A salaryman on his way home picked up a card and read aloud.
"Tomorrow, you will answer for your crimes. Your twisted desires have been claimed by us. —Sincerely, the Phantom Thieves of Hearts." A servant, trembling, held a card in both hands and read every word aloud.
Bang! Maru Tsunesaburō slammed the table with such force that tea sloshed from his cup and sprayed across the wood.
"Who did this?!" Though well into his sixties, his voice was thunderous. "Tear this garbage down—rip it all up and burn it!"
"We don't know, sir," the butler answered, keeping his gaze down to avoid the furious red creeping up his master's face. "They're all over the outer walls, sir. And the streets too—scattered across the whole district…"
"What about the security cams? What about the guards?!"
"The footage just caught a couple of children sticking them to the front gate. They claimed they'd just found them in the street…"
Face darkening to a stormcloud gray, Maru Tsunesaburō snatched several of the flyers from the butler's hands, crushed them into a ball, and hurled them at the man. "Useless fools! Clean it up—now!"
"Yes, sir!" The butler fled the room without hesitation.
Panting with fury, Maru dropped into a chair, scowling at the crumpled paper on the floor like it had personally offended him.
His wife, Maru Inako, sat calmly on the other side of the table, lifting her teacup just high enough to hide the sly smile on her lips.
She'd long suspected what kinds of things her husband got up to.
And this flyer? Not a single word of it was wrong.
The Maru Group had been booming lately. Maru Tsunesaburō wasn't short a few million yen—far from it. But he still chose to use underhanded methods, as if dirty money somehow gave him a deeper sense of satisfaction.
"There, there, darling," Mrs. Maru cooed, her voice as sweet as arsenic. "Maybe someone's just jealous of our recent success and is trying to smear your good name. All nonsense, of course—don't get worked up over it."
Maru Tsunesaburō shot her a venomous glare. "What would you know? If this kind of slander spreads, it could ruin the company's reputation! Ugh—why am I even talking to you about this?"
That woman had been acting more suspicious by the day—distracted, absentminded, secretive. He was already having her followed, suspecting she was seeing someone on the side. Just the sight of her smug little smile made his blood boil.
Everything was worthless. Everyone around him—useless trash.
Still fuming, he got up and stormed off toward the room where he kept his private collection.
Forget all that "answer for your crimes" crap. If he had to guess, this whole "Phantom Thieves" thing was just a front—probably someone who'd set their sights on his collection.
And sure, maybe the ways he'd acquired his pieces weren't exactly squeaky clean, but Maru Tsunesaburō had never been shy about showing off what he owned. On top of being a highly successful businessman, he was also known as a prominent collector.
Maybe some bottom-feeding loser who couldn't pay their debts had sent someone to steal from him?
He stewed in his own bitterness.
Elsewhere—on the flip side of the world he knew—within the realm of Shadows, a grim-faced Maru Tsunesaburō stood clad in ceremonial robes. His expression was one of withering menace as he took a samurai sword from the wall and drew the blade with a flash of silver.
"Wretched little thieves… coveting my treasures? I'll see to it you never return."
——
"The target has no formal training on record."
"You're sure about that?"
"We've combed through over a decade's worth of data. Middle school, high school—not a single unexplained absence. His life follows a perfectly normal student trajectory."
In the top-floor apartment across from the café, Shuichi Akai, newly moved in, listened to his colleague's voice over the phone, brows knitting together.
"No way a kid like that could've shaken off surveillance that fast. He's no average high schooler."
Before him lay a few printed stills—photos snapped during the moment Karasawa had been bumped into on the shopping street earlier that day.
One showed Karasawa's startled glance; another, him reflexively lifting both fists in a guarded stance; the last, reaching out to steady the person who'd collided with him.
"You've seen the photos. His reaction was instinctive—clean defensive posture, footwork and hand movements fast and fluid. That's solid boxing or hand-to-hand training, minimum."
If Rei Furuya saw these photos, he'd feel it immediately—something eerily familiar.
Because that? That was Furuya's own combat style in a nutshell.
"No blank records post-middle school. What about before that?" Akai asked, voice thoughtful.
"Shu, he was eleven or twelve at the time…"
"Don't forget who his parents were," Akai said, switching the phone to his other hand as he lit a cigarette. He placed the photographs into an ashtray and lit the edge with the same flame.
"At eleven or twelve, he was still living with them."
There was silence on the other end for a beat, then a hesitant question: "Are you saying the Karasawa couple experimented on their own son?"
"It wasn't experimentation," Akai exhaled slowly, leaning against the window to gaze at the darkened street below.
"The Karasawas didn't start their research in spite of their child—they did it for him.
"If there's anything in the world that perfectly embodies the results of their work… it's Karasawa Akira."