Tokyo, Beika Town, inside a pharmaceutical company, a private laboratory.
A beautiful young woman with wavy brown hair passed a series of authentications outside the laboratory door and entered the lab.
Upon entering the laboratory, the brown-haired young woman put on the white coat hanging on the rack by the door, then brewed a cup of coffee, and sat down in front of the lab computer.
Operating the computer, the brown-haired young woman initially just routinely reviewed the experiment record videos, but soon, a message with updated content popped up in the bottom right corner of the desktop from the computer's internal messaging system.
The brown-haired young woman merely sighed slightly at this message, seeming accustomed to such occurrences—this information was always updated from time to time.
Although she understood the meaning of this updated information, she was unfortunately powerless; here, she was ultimately just a caged bird with a name.
It was just a pity that this time, she didn't know which unfortunate soul had become a ghost—though she didn't know any of the people on that list at all.
Subconsciously, the young woman still clicked on the message. It was a table, and from top to bottom, many names were recorded on it, each followed by the uniform notation of "Deceased."
The young woman habitually quickly scrolled through the table—these people never recorded the table in order, so it didn't matter to her which ones were new.
But this time, as the young woman was about to close the table, a familiar name caught her eye:
"Mitarai Kyosuke Deceased."
Among these unfamiliar names, this name stood out so glaringly.
In an instant, the young woman's eyes widened, and she froze on the spot, motionless for a long time.
Then, as if thinking of something, the young woman began to silently ponder:
"It might not be him! Right... it might not be him!"
After repeating this sentence a few times, the young woman suddenly leaned back in her chair, covering her eyes with her right arm, silently wiping away tears from the corners of her eyes, as if she had understood something, giving up her previous fantasy—"Why, they didn't even spare him!"
In the laboratory, the young woman remained in this position for a long time, until the sound of the phone on the table broke the silence.
"Hello! Shiho! Are you free at noon? We haven't seen each other in a while, how about we have lunch together? Louise is coming too."
From the other end of the phone came a gentle female voice.
The young woman didn't answer, she sobbed once, not knowing how to speak, but her voice was heard by the person on the other end of the phone.
"What's wrong? Shiho, are you crying?"
Seemingly waiting for a reply, the phone did not continue to press for an answer.
"Sister... he... is dead..."
After composing herself, the young woman said this... Meanwhile, on the train, Takato looked at the newly appeared text on the panel and showed a relaxed smile—the first stage was finally over!
"Stage Two has been activated. Stage One settlement is now beginning."
"Observation: S"
"Knowledge: A"
"Logic: B"
"Overall evaluation for Stage One: A"
Looking at the newly popped-up stage evaluation, Takato breathed a sigh of relief; at least the score for this stage was still above the passing line.
This time, he was indeed a bit worried that not fully deducing Mr. Nishikawa's intention behind the cipher might lead to a too-low evaluation for this stage, which would put a lot of pressure on the subsequent stages. But fortunately, Observation was an "S," so it seemed he had grasped all the clues that needed to be understood in this stage.
So now, what he needed to consider was this heist notice.
Speaking of which, he really wanted to get in touch with Kaito Kid, who was Kuroba Kaito, a student at Ekoda High School. However, he couldn't think of a reason to approach him before. He couldn't just go up to him and say he knew he was Kaito Kid, could he? Hakuba Saguru also knew, but what good did that do?
Now, the appearance of this stage mission was a perfect opportunity!
But after reading the content of the heist notice several times, Takato couldn't help but frown—what exactly did this mean?
"The last sentence directly states what he's stealing, no explanation needed. So the preceding text should be about the time and place."
Thinking this, Takato looked at the text. So, which words looked like they were talking about time?
"The first sentence is quite strange, 'It is spring now'? It's clearly September now, it should be autumn... Huh? Autumn?"
Thinking of this, Takato looked at the third sentence, "And when the dew falling on the grass shines white."
"Mentioning autumn and dew... This couldn't be referring to White Dew (Bailu) could it! If I think this way, this sentence is practically spelling out the words 'Bailu'! And Bailu should also be in the first half of September, so the time matches!"
Convinced that he had guessed correctly, Takato began to look further. Since the third sentence referred to the date, then theoretically, the fourth sentence should be the specific time.
"'When the exiled divine hero passes through the zenith.' The exiled divine hero? If I'm not mistaken, this title refers to Perseus in Greek mythology, right? But to associate time from this... Perseus in the sky? Greek mythology?"
After a moment of thought, Takato came up with the answer, then focused his attention on the first two sentences—these two sentences were the most difficult to understand.
After looking for a long time, Takato still couldn't make anything out, so he began to read the entire report from beginning to end.
Collector Saeki Tadashi is a relatively famous collector in Tokyo. Under his name, he owns many art museums and real estate properties, which house many artworks Saeki Tadashi has collected over the years. Some of these are exhibited to the public, while others are private collections.
The "tears of moonlight" mentioned in Kaito Kid's heist notice this time is one of the private collections not displayed to the public. Public records show that this gem was acquired by Saeki Tadashi at a public auction in the United States five or six years ago, and there has been no news about it since.
It is said that the "tears of moonlight" is a naturally crescent-shaped yellow jadeite embedded with a white diamond resembling a tear. It is a dreamlike gem, and the name "tears of moonlight" comes from its shape.
However, since this gem first appeared at that auction and was subsequently privately collected, there are virtually no actual photos of it available to the public. Therefore, Kaito Kid's sending of the heist notice to Saeki Tadashi has made many curious media outlets eager to see the gem's true appearance.
As a result, many media outlets have begun to speculate where Saeki Tadashi might have stored this gem, and have listed the names and locations of all the museums and properties under Saeki Tadashi's name.
It was precisely because of this that when Takato saw the name of one of the buildings, he showed a look of understanding!
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