The icy, piercing thought that his father might have been murdered became the most powerful engine, driving Kuchiba Hiro's nearly frozen body forward.
Though hunger gnawed and grief and exhaustion weighed him down, a will harder than steel kept him moving; he had to learn the truth.
He strode out of his apartment. The luxury building had tight security; he rode the elevator to the ground floor, walked to the guardroom, showed his ID, and said in a calm but absolute tone, "Hello, I think someone broke into my apartment and stole something important. Please pull the surveillance footage for the last few days; I'll review it and then file a police report."
With the guard's help he pored over the recordings. Soon a figure caught his eye: a man in plain workman's coveralls, mask on and cap pulled low, carrying what looked like a toolbox, who had entered and left his floor.
The outfit deliberately hid the face, the movements deliberately ordinary—so ordinary they reeked of caution.
Yet no cameras covered the corridor itself; for residents' privacy, none were installed.
Undeterred, Kuchiba Hiro switched to the underground-garage exit camera and memorized the license plate of the car the man used.
With the vital data in hand he dialed the police without hesitation: "I'd like to report a burglary. Roughly one million yen in property has been stolen from my residence. I have the suspect's vehicle information; the plate is …"
When the call ended he returned home. His goal was now crystal-clear. He re-entered his father's study, not to mourn but to search like a detective, scouring every corner for a clue.
His effort paid off. In the deepest drawer of the desk he felt a bundle wrapped in kraft paper. Inside lay a stack of yellowing newspaper clippings.
They spanned different years; the oldest was eight years past. Topics ranged from social incidents to world affairs to celebrity gossip, seemingly unrelated—except that every article about geologists, physicists, or meteorologists had names and photos circled in vivid red ink.
Next to the circled faces the headlines screamed: "Renowned geologist killed in landslide during survey," "Genius physicist dies in lab explosion," "Dean of meteorology succumbs to illness," "Group of experts vanish; doubts abound." Kuchiba Hiro's heart lurched. He realized he might have stumbled onto something pivotal. A quick count showed more than twenty such scholars, all circled, all dead from "accidents," "illness," or "mysterious disappearances" within just a few years; casualties in geology and meteorology were especially heavy.
Could his father's death be linked to this macabre list? Had his father been secretly investigating these fatalities?
With that chilling question Kuchiba Hiro sat back at the computer and frantically searched for information on those scholars—their research, their last public statements.
Yet the internet yielded pitifully little, as if filtered by an invisible net; most trails ended on doomsday-cult pages shrieking that the end of the world was nigh.
"2012 was ages ago …" he muttered, dismissing the nonsense with a frown.
But he had no patience for absurdities now. He noticed recurring terms in the scholars' work: "violent crustal activity," "climate-system collapse," "global extinction event"—words that eerily meshed with the cults' apocalyptic rants.
Though he scoffed at doomsday talk, instinct told him this was no coincidence. A colossal secret lay behind it, one its guardians killed to protect, and his father had likely died for brushing too close.
"I have to find that phony repairman who broke in," Kuchiba Hiro said, staring at the gray sky outside, eyes cold and resolute, "or start with these scholars' bizarre deaths. They're the only leads I've got."
He knew full well he was prying open a bottomless pit of darkness, but for his father he had no choice.
While the plot on the light screen was tense and suspenseful, the real world beneath it—cyberspace—had already exploded.
On every major social platform, forum, and livestream chat, hashtags like #SkyLightScreen, #KuchibaHiro, and #SerialScholarDeaths were blowing up.
'This is straight out of a movie — his dad really was silenced?!'
'The more I think about it, the scarier it gets! So many scientists dying unnaturally — there's definitely something shady behind it!'
'I don't buy any end-of-the-world stuff, but a secret group silencing people? Absolutely believe it—classic trope! (dog-head emoji)'
'+1. Apocalypse is too far-fetched, but conspiracy theories make sense. Maybe the old man dug up something?'
'Top comment nailed it! Probably some mega-corp protecting its profits, and Kuchiba's dad walked into the crosshairs.'
'Can I rag on the villain for a sec? You kill someone, fine—but you wipe the computer spotless and nuke every account? Might as well scream "Come investigate me!" Classic "no silver here" move.'
'Haha, total backfire. The killer just handed over the key clue himself.'
'Still, props to this kid—quick thinker, fast mover, pulling CCTV and old clippings like a pro. Ice-cold for a high-schooler; pure detective vibes!'
'Instant fan! Tragic and tough, brain switched on—way better than the clueless sweethearts in most dramas.'
Yet amid the feverish chatter and jokes, a cold unease began to seep in like an undercurrent.
Some über-curious—or just über-active—netizens had already started cross-checking the newspaper clippings and scholars' names shown on the light screen against real-world records.
The results were chilling.
'Holy crap!!! I looked up that geologist mentioned in the light screen — Shōta Tanaka, died in a landslide three years ago. Real person, exact date, everything matches!'
'Same here! The physicist who died in the lab explosion — Ichirō Suzuki. Happened exactly three years ago; the news archive is still up!'
'And the missing meteorology team… names and incident line up perfectly. These cases all really happened!'
At first these verification posts landed like pebbles in a pond, sending ripples of shock. But soon users noticed something off.
Any thread or comment listing real names and digging into the "Serial Scholar Deaths" was throttled by an invisible force.
View counts stayed bizarrely low, reposts failed, and on some platforms the posts simply vanished. Even coded or homophone work-arounds sank instantly, as if unseen eyes and hands were watching—and strangling—every attempt to spread the word.
Such eerily efficient "info silence" mirrored the methods of the organization inside the light screen: erasing a person's digital life, staging perfect accidents.
The tone of the discussion shifted.
'The post I just shared listing all the dead scholars… it's gone?'
'Me too… my DMs look swallowed—someone's censoring hard!'
'Seriously, officer… this is real?'
'If the light screen is showing the "future," then these "past" cases are real—and someone's stopping us talking about them right now?!'
'I've got goosebumps… so the enemy that hasn't even appeared on the light screen… exists in reality? And they're here among us, watching?!'
'Crap, I'm suddenly afraid to type…'
An unprecedented chill crept along fiber-optic cables into countless hearts staring at screens.
If both the "future" and the "past" on the light screen are real, and if the Serial Scholar Deaths that Kuchiba Hiro's father investigated point to a colossal organization—one powerful enough to twist reality, bury truth, and kill invisibly—then what kind of monstrosity is this lone boy on a global livestream confronting?
And what vortex will ordinary viewers like them be dragged into once they've glimpsed the tip of this iceberg?
The light screen in the sky was no longer spectacle or entertainment; it had become a giant ticking clock, clanging in the hearts of everyone who sensed something was wrong.