Chapter 62: A Trap At 3:20 AM

Chapter 62: Chapter 62: A Trap At 3:20 AM

Mataguchi’s monologue, POV

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?The electronic door lock chimed softly, recognizing my fingerprint and sliding the heavy front door open with a quiet hiss. I stepped inside, standing straight with my arms hanging down easily. My half-closed eyes scanned the room with calm, careful focus.

?Everything looked normal at first glance. The living area, the desk, and the simple decorations were all right where they belonged.

?Yet, I instantly noticed tiny differences. A tiny speck of dust had been moved from the corner of the entryway table. The air in the hallway felt slightly more humid, meaning the air conditioning had been manually messed with. The items in the room hadn’t just been tossed around; they had been carefully put back in their exact places to make it look like nothing happened.

?Someone had entered my apartment.

?I kept my steady pace, walking further into the room as if I didn’t notice a thing. My mind immediately started running the security checks.

?This apartment was protected by high-level school security. Getting in without my personal fingerprint and active school ID was mathematically impossible—and both of those were safely with me.

?The conclusion was clear and certain.

?They are connected to Karafuguru.

?The organization running the facility had bypassed my security using master administrative codes. I connected this to the news broadcast I had seen earlier in Suzanne’s office about people disappearing over the last seventy-two hours.

?The pieces fit together clearly. I was being treated as a main suspect or lead in their ongoing investigation.

?Given the mystery I had been quietly looking into on my own, it made sense that they had already found security footage, traffic data, or digital trails placing me right where those strange events happened.

?They are watching me.

?If the police or Karafuguru’s internal security had hooked their cameras up to my living space, hidden lenses were pointed right at me. I could also guess that they were watching me everywhere else—tracking my live movements through street cameras, public trains, and at school.

?I walked into the bedroom, took off the heavy black backpack, and dropped it onto the middle of the bed.

?I moved slowly, acting like a normal student unpacking his things. I went through a stack of textbooks and notebooks, pulling them out one by one. Among them, I grabbed a small pocket mirror—something I kept just to blend in.

?Instead of looking at my face, I laid the mirror flat on the mattress among the books, tilting it at a specific angle.

?Through the faint reflection of the ceiling and wall corners in the mirror, I checked the blind spots of the room. The angle caught a tiny, almost invisible shine near the smoke detector—a tiny camera lens no bigger than a grain of sand.

?Found one.

?I shifted my posture slightly, figuring out where the first camera was pointing. Even though I couldn’t spot every hidden camera in the apartment, finding one proved my guess right. They were watching my every move in real time.

?Knowing I was on camera, I kept my normal, calm behavior. No panic. No sudden changes.

?I turned away from the bedroom and walked into the small kitchen, carrying the plastic grocery bag Blackhawk had given me.

?With calm, step-by-step efficiency, I unpacked the raw beef, root vegetables, and curry cubes. I set water to boil, chopped the food cleanly and precisely using my good right hand, and let the spices simmer on the stove.

?Thirty minutes later, I put the food on a plate and ate it in quiet, measured bites. The food filled my stomach without bringing any joy.

?Once I finished, I washed the dishes, changed into my sleep clothes, and walked back into the bedroom. Ignoring the hidden camera watching me from the ceiling, I lay down on the bed, pulled up the blankets, and closed my eyes, letting sleep take over while the silent digital eyes watched from the dark.

?My eyes opened to the dark, quiet bedroom. The digital clock on the bedside table read 3:14 AM.

?My body had finished its normal sleep cycle, leaving my mind fully awake. Since I couldn’t fall back asleep, I sat up and slid out of bed quietly. I sat at my desk and turned on my computer to look at schoolwork, using the quiet hours to study advanced history and physics.

?After finishing my school modules, I opened a private browser window to check recent public news and social media updates.

?A trending hashtag caught my eye—it was the pop singer whose live broadcast had been playing on the giant screen earlier that evening. I clicked on her official profile and scrolled through her music videos and promo clips.

?After thirty seconds of watching, I closed the tab, feeling completely bored. The fake perfection of the studio songs had no real soul; they were much less interesting than the raw, imperfect street song I had heard earlier that night.

?To pass the remaining hours, I opened a streaming app to watch a broadcast show.

?Halfway through the episode, the live feed suddenly cut out. The screen flickered and instantly switched to an emergency broadcast from the police department.

?A serious-looking official appeared on screen, talking directly to the late-night audience. The anchor’s voice sounded heavy and strict.

?"Breaking news regarding the ongoing city disappearance investigation. Authorities confirm that tracking data has linked one of the main suspects directly to a student currently attending Karafuguru High..."

?I didn’t react. My face stayed completely blank, my half-closed eyes looking flatly at the glowing screen.

?A trap.

?The timing of the broadcast—pushed out at 3:20 AM on purpose—was fake. It wasn’t a real news leak; it was a psychological trick meant to cause panic, make me leave a digital footprint, or force a nervous reaction. The broadcast proved, without a doubt, that the hidden cameras in my apartment were actively sending live video of my every move to a team watching me.

?They wanted to see how the ’AI’ would react to being exposed.

?Slowly and carefully, I opened a public search engine. I typed in a few broad questions about the disappearance case, purposefully searching the way a normal high school student would if they found out their school was tied to a crime. I spent several minutes browsing student chat rooms and local news sites, acting like a worried kid trying to stay out of trouble.

?Once I gave the cameras the reaction they were looking for, I closed the browser.

?I opened an anime series I had seen recommended on Instagram earlier. I watched three episodes in a row, studying the characters and the story with cool, calm detachment.

?At 4:45 AM, I closed the computer screen.

?I walked back to the bed, lay down under the blankets, and closed my eyes again—falling into a deep, uninterrupted sleep, completely unbothered by the silent watchers in the dark.

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"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."

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