The Hidden World

Yuki and Akira returned to the dorm and immediately went to bed and fell asleep. Walking around for the whole day was tiring and it was now just starting to show itself. They sleep soundly until morning came.

Yuki woke first and went about his daily custom of cooking, eating, and getting himself ready for the day. Since it was the weekend, he decided to enjoy a hot bath and floated around for a bit. When he felt that he had wasted enough time, he came out and found Akira in the living room eating the breakfast that he had left out for her. She looked up and gave him a small smile.

“Thank you for yesterday,” she said, a fork in her hand.

“There’s no need to thank me,” Yuki replied. “I needed some time off as well. Whenever you want to do something like that again, you just need to tell and I’ll say yes. Don’t worry too much about it.”

Akira nodded, her smile growing brighter, and she returned her attention to her meal. Yuki let her do that and went to the television in the room. Then he clapped his hands and called out to Uriel.

“Hey boss,” she answered immediately. “Done with your date?”

“Yes, if you want to call it that,” Yuki replied. “As I promised, I’ll be helping you narrow down that list of yours into at most five names. Or ideas.”

“Ideas?” Uriel repeated. “Thought you wanted names?”

“No, I wanted you to investigate his background. When did I specifically ask for names?” he asked back.

“That is true. It’s because you were asking for names before that I was still set on names. Next time I’ll have to readjust my parameters so that I makes sure what it is you want,” Uriel said.

“I probably should have told you anyway,” Yuki replied. “It would have sped up this whole process if I did. But, putting that aside, let’s get started.”

Yuki reached into a bag that was placed on the living room table from the night before. When he was out exploring with Akira, he had bought some things along the way. He took out a sleek black device the size of smartphone and placed it flat onto the surface of the glass table.

“Uriel, you can feel something, right?” he asked. "Like something is touching your system?"

“Hmm? You mean the device that you just placed?” she said.

“That’s right.”

“Then, yes. I can feel it. Do you want me to connect to this device?” she asked.

Yuki nodded and gave her a sound of confirmation. Soon after, the device gave out a single ding and lines that were etched onto it began to glow a deep blue. Then a ball of shifting gold colored particles was projected out.

“Ooo, this is nice boss~,” Uriel said, the mass of little particles moving as she spoke. “I feel more real.”

“It’ll also allow me to touch you and the information that is displayed,” Yuki explained. “It’s portable and that means that I can take you where ever I need to go.”

“Mm, that’s good. Now let’s get started, shall we~?” she said.

Before Yuki, dozens upon dozens of screens flared into life. It seemed that this was all of the information related to Nataru and the Katem family. And as expected of a family as powerful and important as Nataru’s, there was a lot of information.

“Show me only the information related to Nataru Katem,” Yuki requested.

Immediately, the majority of the screens blink out of existence and what was left were a few pages. As Yuki scanned through them, he discovered that each of the pages were only groups of links that connected to other pages. Each screen had a category ranging from news articles to forums and for whatever reason financial statements and government documents.

“This is well organized,” Yuki commented.

“Thanks, I had nothing to do yesterday since you told me to not do anything,” Uriel replied. “So I just gathered info and organized it.”

“And why are there government documents and private financial records?”

“Someone told me to hack a government computer~,” she said playfully. “I do what I am told to do.”

Yuki paused and thought about this new development. He had been mostly joking when he gave her the suggestion of breaking into government computers. Through his research, he had discovered that this world’s government function much like Earth’s. They had various departments that each had authority over different things. Departments such as the investigation agency called LIA, a health department, magic department, and others like that. Each of these administrations had their own database of information. And it seemed that Uriel had managed to hack into them all.

It wasn’t that Yuki didn’t think it was possible to break into these databases but rather that he didn’t have the tools necessary to do it yet. But it seemed that he had underestimated Uriel’s capacity and intelligence. He was a bit worried that she may have been traced somehow, but if she was able to hack into those computers this easily then she should be able to hide her steps just as easily. Overall, Yuki was quite satisfied with this new development.

“Well done,” he said to Uriel. “I take you hid your trace, correct?”

“Of course, boss,” she replied. “If I’m going to do illegal things, then I might as well do it correctly, no?”

“Exactly,” Yuki agreed. “But let’s remove some of these. For instance, I don’t think I need to know what type girl he likes so you might want to get rid of those.”

The pages shrunk before him as he spoke and links were eliminated. Then as Yuki scanned through more and more screens and read the links, he filtered out more and more of the data until they were left with three pages. One was a page about Nataru’s financial records for the past decade. The other was about his interactions with the public and news about him. The last was a screen filled with links to various rumor and gossip chat threads online.

“Do you need any help?” Akira asked as she watched from the couch.

“It would be helpful to have another person analyzing this data with me,” Yuki said. “Can you handle one of the pages?”

“Sure,” she answered cheerfully. “Which one do you want me to do?”

“Take the news page,” Yuki said. “Uriel, you’re going to analyse and organize the financial page. I need everything in an easy to absorb manner. Can you handle that?”

“I hacked most of the government’s private servers. I think I can handle some spreadsheets,” she replied.

“I’ll be taking the last page then,” Yuki announced. “Let’s get to work.”

They all fell quiet as they began to read the various links and information assigned to them. Akira began to hum to herself and Uriel pulsated in the air.

The reason why Yuki choose these three things to analyze was simple. Financial records can show whether or not someone is experiencing any difficulties in their lives. The news will report on things that may be relevant in terms of problems in a person’s life or things that may affect a person’s life. Rumors and gossip, while false a lot of the time, can be a good indicator as to the reputation of Nataru and his family. In addition, some of these rumors may be true and might be things that were being hidden by the Katem family.

What Yuki found was troubling. Previous to his exploration into the Katem family, all he knew about them was that they were a powerful and well known family. And so, he assumed that meant that they were rich and well respected. But according to the way people talked about them, Yuki saw that wasn’t the case. Maybe they used to be liked and admired once upon a time. But now there was no remnants of anything resembling respect. Everywhere Yuki read, there were disparaging remarks about the family; some even going as far as to insult individual members and calling them names.

‘Wow, I wonder what happened?’ Yuki thought as he read.

After scanning through the rest of the links, Yuki was able to gain a grasp as to the reason. It seemed that the family had done a few business and political moves that backfired and snowballed. Some of these included investments into companies that failed miserably or public speeches where they seemed to forget what it was they wanted to say. Interestingly enough, all of these mishaps occurred within the last three years.

‘So Nataru’s family reputation is falling to rock bottom,’ Yuki concluded. ‘Though, the timing between the events are quite interesting.’

Finishing with his part, Yuki looked away from his projected screen and saw that Akira was still reading through her’s, her humming gone and her eyebrows furrowed. Uriel seemed to be finish as she was no longer swirling around. Yuki went over to Akira’s side and looked at what she was reading. She noticed his presence and glanced over at him.

“I’m done,” she told him. “But it’s just that this article is bothering me.”

“How so?” he asked.

“It is detailing some rumors about the Katem family that are quite interesting to say the least,” she explained.

She scooted to the side so that Yuki would view her screen. Yuki sat down and quickly scanned through the article.

“‘Head of Katem family replaced with outsider’?” Yuki read out loud.

“Yes,” Uriel spoke up from behind them. “There have been rumors that someone not part of the Katem family and bloodline has taken over the head position.”

“How can someone do that?” Yuki asked her.

“If the family was desperate enough and someone offered a possible solution to their problems, then that would explain how one could gain that position,” Akira answered.

“Anything else you discover?” Yuki asked.

“Well, the family seemed to be doing some shady business deals and have had multiple failing business ventures,” Akira said. “Some failed pitches for government office. They never won any battles for any important positions in the last three years.”

Yuki knew that when Akira said that they didn’t win any battles she meant literal battles. In Ethros, the government positions were decided with a test to see if one qualifies for said position and a battle to see if one was strong enough. The fight was the most important part of the whole process. It pitched the current sitting official against the upcoming hopeful. The winner would get the position, regardless of who had the better test score.

“Uriel, what did you find?” Yuki asked, glancing at the floating mass of particles.

“I found that the Katem family is on the verge of bankruptcy,” she replied cheerfully. “Looking through just Nataru Katem’s spendings, the amount that he uses and the quality of the things he buys keep dropping exponentially. He goes from going to five star restaurants to mainly eating at fast food joints for dinner.”

“That’s pretty bad,” Yuki commented.

“That’s pretty sad,” Akira added.

“The rest of the family isn’t much better. If anything, they are doing worse since Nataru has his Academy income to supplement his spendings,” Uriel continued. “Because of this, he’s better off then them.”

“Which could garner some jealousy from his family,” Yuki concluded. “So to sum this up, Nataru Katem is an instructor at this Academy. There was an attack on this Academy at the time that the first years were hunting in the forest in the form of a golem. This means that the attacker had inside information on what to attack the school with. We also know that the Shikaku is behind those attacks because they were stealing blueprints from an Academy instructor. Did I miss anything that we knew beforehand?”

“Nothing, go on,” Akira said.

“Now we know that the instructor who almost had their plans stolen was in close correspondence with Nataru and Mabel,” Yuki continued. “Looking into Nataru’s family background we see that they were an affluent family with great power. However, in recent years they have fallen off at quite an amazing rate. They have suffered defeat after defeat in both the financial and the political realm. Their reputation has also been destroyed at a similar rate. And now they have become desperate enough to place an outsider as the head of their family.”

“Nataru works at the Academy and because of this is doing better than the rest of his family. It would be safe to assume that this has garnered some animosity from family. But due to his position as an instructor at the Academy, he may be the only ray of hope for the Katem family.”

“I see where you are going with this,” Akira said. “If Nataru is the last hope for the Katem family, then what would be the fastest way for one to gain prestige and power in  the Academy? That would be, of course, to become the headmaster.”

“That is exactly correct,” Yuki said.

“Nataru isn’t strong enough to become headmaster when you compare him to Selene,” Akira continued. “And because of this, he cannot directly challenge her authority. And so, what would be the other route to gain that position?”

“Find a way to discredit the current headmaster and remove her from her seat,” Uriel finished. “Do this by creating incidents to show that the headmaster is incompetent and when things get bad, come in like a hero and save the day. At least, that is what I would do.”

“That is what I would do as well,” Yuki replied. “As of right now, we have one person at the top of our list of people to investigate.”

“Nataru Katem,” Akira completed, pulling up a picture of Nataru’s Academy photo.