In the dead of night, three figures sat beneath a large spreading tree and said nothing.
This had been going on for a while.
Yuto sat with his back straight and his eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance, which was to say he was looking at nothing in particular. To his left, the thief was doing something with a small stone — tossing it, catching it, tossing it again.
To his right, Shiny sat slightly apart from both of them, tall even while seated, sharp face unreadable in the dark. He had not moved in some time.
He looked like a statue someone had left out here.
An expensive statue.
The Masaki estate remained visible through the gaps in the trees, torchlight flickering unevenly behind the hedgerows like restless fireflies trapped in place. When the wind shifted just right, distant voices carried through the night, fragmented and indistinct, rising and falling in patterns that suggested a coordinated search, organized and methodical in its sweep.
