1 CHAPTER 1

john"Hey Azumi, this is your specialty right?" My teammate asked and showed me the password of the laptop in a ciphertext.

JJDXJSFUXDSQE

I thought of it for a while and I confirmed that the owner used alphabetical math. I grabbed a pen and a paper and started decoding. After I decoded it, I felt very sad for the victim and I'm now furiously mad at the suspect. I typed the password that I had just decoded and it open, as it opens, we saw one of our suspects.

"Have you opened it already?" Hide asked, and I just nodded. "What's the password?" He asked again.

"Tss, an ungrateful child." He frowned at my answer, maybe because he was thinking that that was the password. He always knew that no suspects, well, maybe some, would make a password that discredits themselves, well, he should know, he's a whodunnit addict after all, so how suspect thinks became his specialty. "I HATE MY MOTHER was the password," I said. He just nodded in response. Tss, cold!

We opened the computer and went to her documents and look and some files, there's a file that is written in a different language.

일기

That was what is written in the file but we can't understand it. I clicked it and a password is required again, a good thing that it's still the same as the password in opening her laptop, after we open it, we saw some more documents that have the same writings.

"Is she online now?" I asked Hide.

"Yes Captain, I'm back," Rize answered us through her mouthpiece and earpiece.

"God! Rize! You got us worried! What happened to you?" I worriedly said.

"Sorry Cap. My earpiece dropped off so I did not hear you." She explained.

"Go upstairs, the third room," I said.

"Copy." She answered.

The mouthpiece is a very tiny communicating device that we hide between our teeth, that's the way for us to communicate if war is far from each other, and we can hear through the earpiece, we hide it in the edge of our semicircular canal and once it touches the skin, it camouflages to our skin color. After a while, Rize arrived and removed her make up. She was spying on our three suspects, pretending to be one of their loved ones. She also removed her voice changer, it's like a choker and it camouflages the skin too.

"Is this Japanese or something?" I asked.

"No, it's Korean." She checked some documents. "This is a Diary." She said. "Wait, who's laptop is this?" She asked.

"Ariela Montez," I answered.

"Eh? While I was spying on the three, Ariela Montez had said something suspicious. She said 'I'm finally free. I think it's a good thing'." She said. Hide and I just nodded. We brought our attention back to the documents and Rize opened one and laughed.

"Why are you laughing?" I asked.

"Because the characters are Korean but it's English if you read it." She answered. I looked at her confused. Hide on the other side just look her coldly. "Don't give it a damn. You won't understand it after all." She said while giggling.

Well, she's right, we can't understand because we can't relate. I could feel my tears falling, a good thing that I managed to stop it. I don't want them to see my tears because they won't understand, no one can understand me.

"Read it." Hide (Hi-de) said he's our vice-captain. Rize just nodded.

"Useless mother! So nosy! As of I'm going to die if I'll go out with my friends. Damn her!!" After reading the text, she opened another one. "This is so irritating! Does even my boyfriend have to receive a lecture from her?!! What are we? Kids?!! If only I could change my mother, I really would!" Even now, I'm still amazed by Rize, because I think she knows how to speak almost all of the languages. And that became her specialty.

While listening to Rize, my tears are about to fall again, and by now, it's so hard to stop, I turned around from them so they won't see my tears falling. She was a useless child! How can she say those things to her mother? Is she stupid? Her reason for her hatred was very unacceptable.

"We already found the suspect huh?" I said. I wiped my tears and then turned to them. Rize had a sad smile on her face while Hide becomes more serious.

"And here's a video as evidence." Our attention went to the door where the voice came from, and it was Armin.

He showed us a video that he got from a broken memory card, he said that someone purposely broke it, good thing that he can extract files even if it's broken. Well, technology is his specialty. He hit the play button and we saw a woman crying.

"I... I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it! W.. Why did I do this?" Said a woman and went close to the woman that is lying on the floor and embraced it. "Mom! I'm sorry!! I didn't mean it! Mom, wake up! Wake up please!!" She said. She let go of that woman and stood up. "I shouldn't have shot this, no one will ever believe me though. I don't want to be in jail." After that, the video ended.

My anger reached its point, it feels like I'm going to burst anytime. She's crazy!!

"Let's go." I seriously said.

"Captain!" Rize called, and I looked at her. "Relax." She said. I breathed deep at started walking away from them.

They know that I become a monster whenever we discover the truth and the reason is very useless. It's because of what happened on our first case that they already memorized me, I beat the suspect until his face is unrecognizable, while beating him, I throw his unacceptable motive for killing on his face. I don't know why though, I can't understand myself either.

When we reached the down floor where our three suspects are when I saw the real culprit, my anger devour me. I was about to attack her but two hands stopped me by holding my shoulders I turned to look who was stopping me and it was Hide and Armin. Rize went towards me and hold my hand. I just breathe deeply and tried to calm down.

"You three are suspected of killing your mother. You all said that you just saw your mother lying on the ground and bathing in her blood. And all of you concluded that the victim committed suicide by jumping from your rooftop. Good thing that the police saw foul play in the scene because the wound is at the back of the head but the face is facing the ground. The suspect may have worn a medical glove because we can't find any DNA. But one of you has been cleaning her room. Did you spill something in your room, Ms. Ariela? Was it blood?" Hide said coldly, he is the one who always talks to the suspect and confront them, he started on our fourth case, confrontation is supposedly my job because I'm the captain, but because of my war freak attitude when the truth is discovered, they fear that I might kill the suspects so, yeah, that's what had happened, and Hide is the rightful one to take over my job in a confrontation because he is the Vice-Captain.

Her sisters looked at her with hatred. I don't remember to Hide telling me that there's something weird on the floor. If I would ask him why though, for sure he'll answer me, "You didn't ask." In his usual cold way. Tss!

"N-no, it's just juice! It's not blood. I-I just accidentally spill the juice I was drinking." She denied.

"Hmmn. So juices smell like blood now huh?" Hide sarcastically asked. Tss, yeah, he's being sarcastic but without any expression on the face, not even just a little smirk. I never even saw him smile, not even once. "And also, your diary speaks for yourself." Hide said and displayed the laptop.

"H-how did you manage to open that? And understand it?" She asked unbelievably.

"Never underestimate a detective." He said with pride.

"Huh! That's not enough evidence. I-I can't kill my mother!"

"Then what does this video mean?" Hide showed the video that Armin made us watch some minutes ago.

Ariella and her sisters started crying. Hide and Armin had to stop them from attacking their sister.

"I didn't mean it! My eyes went black, that's why I banged her nape with my elbows and she fainted, I didn't know that her head will hit the glass table." She said and wailed.

"Whatever you say, your still guilty of killing your mother, who did nothing but worry about you, care for you, and love you unconditionally. You don't even know if your boyfriend loves you unconditionally, he might just love you obligately." She wailed even more after what I said. I want to say that 'Your lucky you have a mother like that.', but I know that my team would have a clue about my problem. And I don't want that.

"Miss Ariela Montez, you are under arrest by the case homicide, you have the right to remain silent. Everything you say can be used against you You must have a lawyer to speak for your self, if you can't afford one, the government will provide you one." The police said that was with ni Rize which was from the outside while putting handcuffs on the suspect.

Ariela, on the other hand just looked down while guided by the police.... We immediately leave the crime scene and went back to the Atom, the SDO base, to report the case this day...

When we arrived, Rize and I changed our clothes in our room and so is Hide and Armin. We changed into our school uniform and removed our makeups. No one should know the existence of SDO, because this organization is hidden. SDO stands for Spying Detectives Organization....

I was the first one to finish changing and immediately went to the Head Guidance office where we pass our reports. We don't type our reports, we have this device we call 'Lazy' to do all the reports. As we speak, it automatically encodes what we are saying and it comes with a little camera that is installed in our contact lenses so it could encode what we are doing. After finishing the case, we will just say 'Case Closed' so it will stop encoding, after that, it will summarize the report and combine the reports of the four of us.

When I arrived at the office, I introduced myself.

"Captain Azumi of Team Gumshoe in Specialized Class." After saying it, the door opened.

As I enter the room, there's an isolated Computer on a single stool. About 20 meters away from the isolated Computer, is Head Guide Nasuna's desk? I inserted the flash drive into the computer and sent the report to her computer. After a minute of reading the report, she smiled sadly.

"You can pass." After she said that, the computer that's in front of me went down so I could pass through. "Congratulations Captain Azumi, as expected from your team." She said and handed me the money. I smiled at her, I'm very proud of my teammates, they're very great. Here in SDO, we are paid for the cases we solve, it's like a part-time job, but secretly.

I went out of the office and saw Captain Sota waiting at the H.G office, he smiled at me and I smiled back. He's also a Specialized Class Detective of team Mole. There are only two teams on Specialized Class in our batch, well, on this year, we are the only Specialized Class left for this year because they all graduated last year., they became Guides or Executives and some stopped being a secret detective. To those who stopped being a secret detective, the Org. Will erase their memory about this Org.

I entered the elevator to leave Atom. This is an underground building, so as I come up the forest of SDC would be seen. SDC stands for Stanley Duff College. The name of the school is used to hide the real name of the school, Spying Detectives College...... I looked at my watch and thank God it's still 8:47 pm, I need to go home already because if it's already 9 pm and I'm not in the house, my mother would lock up the house and won't let me enter.

****

"Bye Xyryl! Thanks for the ride!" Shauntel said and went out of my car. I always go home with Shauntel a.k.a Rize (we can't use our code names outside the Atom or if we are not investigating, for safety purposes.) Because we live in the same subdivision and our house is just facing each other.

"As always, Bye!!" I bid my goodbye and drove my car into our garage.

I opened the door and I thank God it's not locked or I'll be sleeping in my car again.

"Good evening ma'am!" The maids greeted me.

I went up to my room and took a half bath. After a while, mom called us for dinner.

"Hi Baby girl!" My big brother Jyms greeted me.

"Bro! I'm not a baby anymore okay?" I said. He just put his hand on my shoulder and messed up my hair as an answer.

"Wait! Do you have a boyfriend already? Is that why you don't want us to call you baby girl anymore? " My big sister Krystyn butted in. I don't know if our parents have a grudge against vowels that our names don't have one.

"Boyfriend? Tss, no one would even dare to court me you know?!" I remarked.

They both just laughed and went down first because I have to pick up something.

"Xyryl! Why are you so slow! It's time to eat!" Flinched when mom yelled. I sprinted down the stairs and I keep up with my elders that have just reached the last step of the stairs. My sister kissed mom on the cheeks and sit down, my brother did the same thing, I was about to kiss her too but she avoided it by sitting down.

"Eat." Mom said to me and I just smiled at her.

In those simple words of mom, I'm already happy, I would just think that that's the way she shows her love to us even though she treats my siblings differently. My tears are starting to fall but I just choked them back. I'm used to enduring all the pain that I feel, whether it is physical or emotional. In my 20 years of existence, now every pain is tolerating, but it doesn't mean that I don't feel any pain at all.......

I went to my room after eating and I cried my heart out. It hurts knowing that your mother might not love you. I can't even find any evidence of love in her to me. It hurts when she looks at me and there's no love to be found in her eyes, but when she'll look at my siblings, it's full of love like it would burst. I always ask myself what did I do to make her hate me. It hurts like a thousand bullets and knives pierced my skin.

I wiped my tears off when someone chatted with me.

'Hey.' When I looked at who sent it, it was Blake a.k.a Hide.

'What's up!!' I replied.

'Nothing, I'm just checking on you.'

'I'm okay, why?'

'I just noticed your tears when we were investigating that case.' I felt nervous about his reply. Tss, this guy.

'Tss! Still being observant huh?' I retorted.

'Whatever. Goodnight Xyryl."

"Yeah, Goodnight too Blake.'

Tss, he's so cold even in chat, there's even no exclamation mark, and in person, you can't see any emotion that will show in his face at all, he's like a walking dead. But thanks to him, I'm feeling okay now. It feels good when someone worries about you.