Chapter 431 - IT’S HIM (1/2)

Two weeks passed before Akira found a solid lead on Kaito and the meeting he had before he disappeared. She almost jumped up as she looked at the footage of a man in the red light district standing at a corner on the screen.

”It's him. It's him.” She said with an emotional tremor in her voice.  ​​

Rai looked at the young woman working beside him with nȧkėd concern in his eyes. She had been moving from one computer to the next with quick hands and red eyes for almost twenty hours without rest. She looked drained of energy.

He found the image of her worn-out face quite pitiful because he knew she did not like hacking though she was quite gifted at it. When she was teaching him, she told him that he had to become better than her because she hated being stuck behind screens all day.

But for that man, she had been working without rest, afraid that he would miss something important. In addition, she read every report given by her team, even though they were unnecessarily pedantic. He had an inkling that the group was trying to punish her with the long reports.

He pulled his chair to the paused image on the security footage on her computer.

Rai frowned as he stared at the shadowy image of a man with his back facing the computer. A hat was pulled over his hair, and his clothes looked worn out and even dirty. In essence, the figure on the screen was a nondescript man after work.

”Akira, are you sure? There are no distinguishing characteristics on this man.” Raiden said gently.

”I know it's him,” Akira said stubbornly.

”How did you find this footage? And where is this?” He asked, unwilling to agitate her.

They had been running Kaito's image through their systems, and they had gotten no hits. They expanded their search to cover almost the entire city without any positive identification. It was strange that Akira had suddenly made a breakthrough.

Akira turned from the screen and looked at Rai with a happy smile on dry lips and moist, red eyes. He stood up and got her a bottle of water from the mini-fridge under his workstation.

”I know you think I am crazy but I know it is him.” She said after gulping down the water. ”I realised that Kaito was a bit sėnsɨtɨvė to security cameras, but he did not avoid them in an obvious manner such that his behaviour would strike observers as suspicious.”

”It is also useless to run his image through facial recognition because he can disguise himself quite well. So, I wrote a search algorithm based on behaviour patterns. If he was meeting an unknown person, it was unlikely he would walk up to them directly.”

”He would probably wait and observe the person to ensure it was not a trap. It is what I would do. I also chose geographical locations where he would not be remembered by anyone. He would not want to go to a place where he would attract attention.”

”High-traffic and low-end neighbourhoods like red-light districts experience a lot of movement, so they are ideal for a clandestine meeting. One is less likely to be remembered if the customers are not the same crowd every day.” She added.

Raiden found that the logic was quite sound. An ȧssassin would not be so careless to walk and allow his face to be on security cameras without care. Still…

”How do you know this is him?” He asked. ”He does not face the camera and looks like a normal loiterer.”

”I know him,” Akira said with confidence. ”Plus, after waiting for long on the street, he crossed the street and probably went in the bar across the street. That is not regular behaviour for a common loiterer.”

She played the footage of Kaito crossing the street. After a few seconds, he disappeared from the camera which had caught his figure for a while. She smiled again. Once she had the blurry figure, she could follow his movements.

”He stays in the bar for a while before he appears on another camera down the street later.” She said before showing Raiden a man staggering a little but not overly so.