The Search

Asuka read the message from Takamasa on her phone, sighed deep, and closed her messages. Opening another app, she started flipping through different still images which showed downtown Tokyo. As she tapped on one, it opened to show a live feed of whichever location she selected. The city's security cameras were nothing to the sixteen year old tech expert. She was on the hunt for Shingo. Since he hadn't been responding to her text messages, she figured something happened to him.

Searching the cameras at the train yard she could see lots of workers meandering about, but the quality of the camera was so poor that she couldn't make anyone out. She backed out of the program, swapped over to another, and began typing code. After a few moments of coding, she tapped on the "Start Program" button which reopened her street camera viewing application. Now, the program registered the different faces of the workers, placed an image of their face, name, address, and other identifiable information on the right side of her screen. In just a few moments, she coded a facial recognition software that tapped into the National Police Agency and scanned their information from drivers licenses.

Having no luck with that camera she switched to another and another and another. Shingo had seemingly disappeared. She switched back over to her messages and opened up Inori's messages.

"Have you seen Shingo?" she typed.

While she waited on a response, she thought to herself that a wider net would be better so she mass sent the question to everyone else in the support group. With those messages sent, she switched back over to her coding program and began typing away again. As she typed, a police officer walking by stopped, looked at her, looked around, and back to Asuka.

"Shouldn't you be in school right now?" the officer questioned.

Asuka didn't even break eye contact with her phone, continuing to type and ignoring the man completely. It was as if she didn't even acknowledge he was there.

"Hello? Little girl? Are you okay?" The officer continued questioning when Asuka didn't respond. "Do you need help?"

Asuka, continued, focused completely on her phone. With no response, the officer sat down next to the preoccupied young girl.

"I know that school and life can be hard at times, but you can't just not go to school. You'll need that knowledge when you get older." The officer said to Asuka without knowing or caring if she was actually paying attention.

"I'm officer Kajiyashiki." He continued. It was obvious the officer was young and inexperienced, but he seemed to genuinely worry about the girl.

After a few moments of silence was spent between the two, he exclaimed, "Oh, me? Well, I've been an officer for only a few months now. That's why I'm wandering around." as if he was responding to questions Asuka had asked.

"Well yes, I do enjoy being an officer, but I wish I had paid more attention in school and gotten a higher paying job." the officer said. "But, that's okay. If I work hard I can get promoted and eventually reach the goals of my real life."

Asuka kept tapping on her phone, seemingly oblivious to the officer sitting with her.

"Ah, I see." The officer said after a few moments of silence again. "You want me to leave you alone. I can take a hint. I really hope that you're okay and if you're not or if you do ever need me I'll leave this right here."

Officer Kajiyashi stood, reached into his pocket, pulled out a business card, and placed it on the bench next to her.

"I'm getting back to my walk." he said before finishing with, "It was nice to meet you and sit with you for a few minutes.

As the young, upbeat officer walked away, Asuka reached over, picked up the business card, and placed it in her pocket before going back to typing on her phone. Running the program again, it opened the city cameras again, but this time, scanning all of them at once. She tapped her finger on her chin as she waited for the program to finish it's run. Once it finished, a red box popped up saying "Target Not Found".

She modified her facial recognition program to scan all the cameras at the same time, and across the almost five million cameras across Japan, Shingo was nowhere to be found. To test and make sure it worked, she swapped over and input a picture of Yuki, then ran the program again. After a few seconds, a screen popped up showing Yuki standing next to Ichiro as they walked down the street. She re-input the picture of Shingo and ran the program again. Shortly after, the red box appeared again. Inputting a picture of Konomi and running the program showed a security camera's view of Konomi sitting at her desk inside Takamasa's publishing office.

Once more, she tried Shingo's picture and once again the red box popped up. Thinking back she opened the camera where he entered the train depot and, after trying some things, reopened her coding application as she stood up and began to walk down the street. A few hundred meters away was a nicer ramen restaurant which she turned into. Pulling a few yen out of her pocket, eyes still glued to her phone, she put money into the vending machine, made her selection, collected her ticket, then sat at a table with her ticket on the side. Service staff collected the ticket as they passed and soon brought a bowl of freshly made ramen and a cup of tea.

As she ate, she continued to type on her phone until she once again clicked the "start program" button. A video opened on her phone and she saw herself and Shingo where they stood that morning at the usual place she dropped him off. She had collected the saved city camera footage from that morning when she walked Shingo to work. Switching through the cameras available to her, she followed his path down into the back room where the workers prepared for work. Continuing to watch the video, several police officers as well as the workers left the room together and moved together to an area outside of camera view.

Asuka opened her messages again and sent a message to Yuki and her brother.

"Do either of you know why there were police officers at Shingo's work today? He's not responding."

With that, all she could do was wait for a response, so she sat her phone on the table and continued to eat her ramen. Fortunately for her, she didn't have to wait long.

"There was some sort of terrorist attack on a train a couple of nights ago. The police are getting assistance from the workers to collect more evidence before they start repairing the trains." Inspector Haruki responded.

"Do you know why he wouldn't respond?" Asuka typed rapidly.

"The special forces group is dealing with the attack and they most likely had them leave their phones behind in case anyone wanted to leak information about it. Do you want me to check and see if he's okay?" Inspector Haruki asked.

"I'm sure he can take care of himself, but if you would then it would set my mind at ease." Asuka typed.

"It might take me some time, but I'll get to the bottom of it. Don't worry." The gracious inspector calmed Asuka's nerves.

Asuka's phone buzzed with a message from Shingo which had a few pictures attached.