"It's not that easy after all."
In an internet cafe in Osaka Prefecture, Takato sat in a private room, looking at the dense code on the computer screen, and sighed.
A few days ago, after leaving Lavender Villa, Takato remembered that he hadn't even brought a change of clothes for three days, so he bought two outfits at a shopping mall and took the rail transit to Osaka.
He originally planned to rest in Osaka and see if he could run into Heiji Hattori. After all, cases in this world always tend to happen around Detectives. If he could take the opportunity to get involved in a few cases, trigger the settlement panel more often, and see if this "cheat" would bring anything new, that was something he was very curious about and wanted to do.
Then, as he passed by this internet cafe, he saw a notice for temporary workers.
Just right, after these few days of expenses, Takato had limited cash left, and a temporary job just met his immediate needs.
Moreover, in an internet cafe, he could also access computers and the internet, and he also needed to go online to investigate some things.
This internet cafe needed to find a temporary worker to temporarily replace a formal employee who was responsible for network maintenance because that employee was injured recently and couldn't come to work, and recently, the internet in the shop frequently had problems.
Coincidentally, Takato's major during graduate school was information security, so he was certainly competent in network maintenance. Thus, Takato naturally became a temporary worker at this internet cafe.
Originally, he was only responsible for the work content during the days when the formal employee was absent, and the manager did not carefully check Takato's identity. After all, it was not easy to find someone competent for this job.
After assessing Takato's abilities, both parties discussed the daily wage and agreed to provide a private room as Takato's accommodation during his work. Takato then moved into the private room and began his work.
For the past few days, Takato had not left the room, staying in this private room, maintaining the internet cafe's network security while doing his own things.
Maintaining the network was very simple for Takato. Regarding the frequent network problems in the shop recently, Takato's inspection revealed that they were all malicious attacks by hackers whose sources were temporarily difficult to trace. After telling the manager about this, the manager considered it might be the behavior of a competitor and did not give too many instructions, only telling Takato to diligently complete his work.
However, the things Takato was doing himself were not that simple.
These past few days, he had been trying to infiltrate Japan's household registration system. Although there is no truly legally significant ID card in Japan, there is still a household registration system.
His current identity, "Akechi Takato," was originally a person who did not exist in this world. To completely disguise his identity, he naturally needed to give the identity "Akechi Takato" a reasonable household registration information. With this, all subsequent identity documents could be processed through some means, but it was precisely this point that gave Takato a huge headache.
After much thought, Takato felt that the best way was to directly hack into the household registration system and add "Akechi Takato's" household registration information, and he indeed possessed the technology in this area.
But these past few days, Takato felt a headache after actually operating. He had indeed hacked into the outer perimeter of the system, and it was not difficult to forcefully break through the system, but he couldn't operate without leaving traces or being discovered.
He had been studying this system for several days. To infiltrate the system without being discovered, he needed the system's management key. Otherwise, there was no way. However, the encryption algorithm of this key was almost impossible to crack with the current computing power of computers—what should he do?
It was at this moment that the program page Takato had written popped up, indicating that the daily fixed attack on the internet cafe's network had begun once again.
"Is this ever going to end? Every day!"
Takato looked at the page impatiently, but his hands were steadily operating on the keyboard.
"It's always the same tricks. Playing a Trojan horse and taking up so much bandwidth, afraid no one will find out, right? If I weren't so busy lately, I'd definitely find your source!"
Saying this, Takato quickly resolved the problem. Although it wasn't a big deal, it was truly annoying to deal with it every day. Just right, there was no progress on hacking the household registration system for now, so why not find this annoying intruder first?
For the past few days, he had been subjected to Trojan horse intrusions at roughly the same time every day. He had clearly written defensive programs, but he was still intruded upon on time every day. A few days ago, he thought the other party was some kind of master, but after figuring out the characteristics of this Trojan horse program in the past two days, he realized that the other party actually did not have very advanced methods.
As for why he was intruded upon every day, the answer was actually very simple—the other party was not conducting an intrusion attack through the network, but rather, it was extremely simple, on a more physical level, directly installing the malicious program onto the internet cafe's computers.
In other words, the person who was online at the internet cafe every time the network was attacked was the intruder. He only needed to ask the front desk to find out who it was.
Thinking this, Takato cleared the computer usage records and was about to go out when suddenly, an extremely noisy sound came from outside the door: shouts of surprise, the sound of running, and a loud cry—"He's dead!"
Hearing this, Takato immediately rushed out the door and saw that the doorway of the private room at the end of the corridor was surrounded by people: the manager, two other employees, and several guests who had come out to investigate the noise.
The manager gave an instruction to one of the employees, and that employee ran towards the internet cafe's front desk, seemingly to make a phone call.
It was at this moment that a burly middle-aged man ran in from outside the internet cafe's door, passed by Takato, arrived at the private room doorway, looked inside, and then stretched out his hand to push away the crowd surrounding the area, shouting loudly.
"Everyone step back! Don't get close! Preserve the scene! No one is allowed to leave here!"
The astonishing aura immediately stunned everyone present. Looking at his figure and appearance, Takato had already recognized the newcomer and then slowly walked up, wanting to see what had happened inside the private room.
"Excuse me, are you..."
The manager, awestruck by the other party, asked in a low voice.
"I am Goro Otaki of the Osaka Prefectural Police Headquarters."
Goro Otaki said, taking out his police ID.
"No one has entered the scene, right?"
"Yes, our employees saw so much blood flowing out from the door before opening the private room door. After seeing this scene, no one dared to go in, so I had someone call the police. I didn't expect you, Officer."
The manager explained.
"I happened to be on duty nearby and came over when I heard the sound."
Goro Otaki said, walking into the private room and roughly inspecting the scene.
Takato also arrived at the doorway and saw the scene before him.
In the private room, a man with his mouth taped shut lay motionless on the sofa, his right hand resting on the armrest of the sofa. Blood flowed from his wrist, forming a pool of blood on the floor, extending towards the door.
What was strange, however, was that the sofa, which should have been facing the computer screen inwards, had now been deliberately turned to face the doorway, allowing everyone outside the door to clearly see the man's tragic state—the man's mouth was taped shut, and he stared straight ahead with terrified eyes, which remained open even in death.
The victim's bag was rummaged through, and his wallet was casually thrown on the floor, now empty.
Officer Otaki looked at the scene and felt a headache coming on.
"How could such a heinous crime be committed in a public place! It seems all valuables were taken, and the victim appears to have been interrogated... Could the killer have been after money?"
No, looking at this scene, Takato rejected Officer Otaki's judgment.
Undoubtedly, this case was clearly—
"Revenge!"
Without warning, a young voice with an Osaka accent came from beside Takato, speaking the same answer that was in Takato's heart!