↑ Nobuo Iseri above ↑

••●••

'We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them'
—Albert Einstein

••●••

"Tadashi, I think it's better for you to head home now." Nobuo pulled the brunet up to his feet, carefully guiding him to the doorway. "I'd escort you there myself, but I'm a little busy if you haven't already noticed... ha ha."

Tadashi barely acknowledged Nobuo's words as he steered him outside of the room. Sensing his club supervisor's anxious stare from behind him as well as his fellow clubmates' pitiful ones, Tadashi gritted his teeth before walking out on his own. "I'll be fine."

Startled at his hostile tone of voice, Nobuo watched, stunned, as the brunet disappeared down the hallway.

"He'll be all right," Yasuo told Nobuo, frowning in his direction and snapping him back to reality. "You're busy, right? Leave Tadashi to take a breather. He needs it."

Yasuo faced the four teens in the room, the corners of his lips curving down distastefully. He didn't waste any time to begin.

"The Crime Games is more than what you all think."

Yasuo's gaze brimmed with seriousness as he spouted the distressing statement. Everyone in the room was taken by surprise, but it wasn't enough to knock them down. With all that was going around them, such words were only a introduction to their upcoming sufferings.

Ryuu clenched his fists, fuming with sudden animosity. "Does this relate to what happened to Tadashi?"

Yasuo spared the teen a glance before shrugging dismissively. "I'll just inform you all that I know. I'm not sure what exactly went on with him, but what I'll tell you will be enough to piece things together."

Nobody dared to oppose. If they were going to be given the answers to what had damaged the once so optimistic teen, they were willing to cooperate and listen.

Yasuo narrowed his eyes at their reactions. He hesitated slightly before beginning the explanation.

"I... I'm really not supposed to tell you guys this, but if it's already come to that, I really hate it," Yasuo stated, sparing Ayame a quick glance.

"Trusting any of you at the moment is quite difficult and I'm guessing you all feel the same way too. But no matter how the situation may have changed, I'm still going to find the identity of the mastermind. My goal will stay the same no matter how much time passes, or how many people betray me. For threatening my clubmates, for putting people in danger, and even going as far as to kill..." Ayame stopped for a pause, but her voice never wavered. "I will find who he or she is, and make sure that justice is put to them."

He cracked a wry smile at the memory. What she announced then was already beginning to take place.

Altering his poise completely, the blond masked his expression with a glare. "This school, Kaisei Academy, has been around for more than thirty years. It's a school famous for its countless amounts of clubs and celebrities, and is a gathering of only those who have been invited to attend. You cannot enter this academy without a special trait or talent or without an invitation. This academy is filled with the best of the best here in Kyoto."

"And this is new, how?" Ayame commented, giving him a deadpanned look. She couldn't follow why this had something to do with Tadashi's situation.

The blond returned a sour look in response. One that told her to be patient. "All the clubs in this school are also top of the top too. With the best teachers, staff members, students... all except for a certain club." Yasuo spared everyone in the room a peek. "The CRF.

"Unlike other schools, Kaisei Academy chooses the best club suited for their students. At least one. And it's up to the students to either attend that club or choose another one. So taking in all of ours likes and dislikes, they suggested people to join the CRF. And us fourteen joined."

"I thought you only joined because of your behaviour," Haru pondered aloud, causing the blond to flinch. "That you were going to be expelled so they threatened you to join."

Yasuo spared him a glance, before clearing his throat. "...So what? The CRF was my original club choice, and I didn't want it at first. But I ended up having to join anyway. But that's not the point!" He crossed his arms agitatedly. "What is, is that despite being a club, it's regarded as one of the lower ones, and this room's crappy condition is proof of that. But that's not why I dislike it."

His eyes overfilled with a solemn emotion.

"The history of the CRF, it runs deeper than just the five measly years it's been active. It's been around since my great-grandfather's time. But not as the Crime Research Facility, but as the "Crime Club.'"

"The Crime Club? So they changed the name?" Akira inquired.

Yasuo snorted. "Nice to see you're getting something so obvious."

Akira fumed at his response. She was only asking! Why was he so infuriating?

The delinquent turned his attention away from Akira before continuing, "The Crime Club consisted of fourteen members, all of different groups and tastes... It went much like our club, in that respect. They would think of crimes to execute and discuss real occurring ones. But...amongst them all, none were ever satisfied with the plans they compiled. One would be sure to complain that their ideas were dull compared to their idolized 'Phantom A.' Needless to say, all the members argued, advocating that the schemes they each crafted were far better than the consensus—that they could pull it off unscathed, guaranteed. Then, one day... one person from the very club turned up dead."

The four teens were taken aback.

Yasuo scowled as he went on, "It was the doings of somebody in the club. But unlike the CRF's current situation, the mastermind sent the Crime Club a letter. He told the them to plan and carry out a sure to work crime that would surely kill them—the mastermind. Even said that the person to succeed would be free from his or her clutches. But there were conditions.

"First, that while the club carried out their schemes, the mastermind would slaughter another member of the club ever week. Second, that if the person they selected truly wasn't the culprit—that they actually killed an innocent member of their club—the mastermind would be given permission to kill the one who'd formulated the plan. It was a kill or be killed situation, all conjured up by the mastermind of this sick game: the Copycat."

Everyone took a while to process the information. It was horrible, but they weren't here to kindle about the past.

Ayame stepped forward, Yasuo's last words piquing her interests. "You said "Copycat" right now. What do you mean by that?"

He cracked an amused smile at her question. Nothing slipped by her, huh? "As I told you earlier, the club idolized a certain criminal," Yasuo explained. "Phantom A, or Phantom Anonymous. His identity was never revealed. He or she were one of the most horrific and cunning criminals ever to have existed, and every hopeless crime-fanatic awed at his work. He would leave puzzles for the police to find so that they could save his next victim before he could kill them. But not once had the police been able to do that. Because the thing with Phantom A was that—"

"—he only killed unrighteous people," Akira cut Yasuo off, wearing a serious frown. Everyone's head snapped toward her in less than a millisecond, their expressions coated in astonishment. Akira's own expression masked to a melancholic one. "My dad still talks about him. He told me that this criminal used to go riotous and crazy as he carried out the best of crimes. Until he got caught one day."

"He got caught?" Ryuu asked.

Akira spared him a glance before bobbing her head. "Since a criminal like himself had never been witnessed, much less identified, the police say that his last crime was sloppy, as if he had wanted them to catch him. And when they did find him, it wasn't when he was alive. They caught him dead."

"But if they found his body, wouldn't they have been able to identify him?" Ayame asked curiously.

Akira made a face. "When I say dead, I meant that he set himself on fire. The police only found the remains, and even then it was hard to identify who it really was."

Yasuo nodded at Akira's explanation. "You've finally said something useful."

Akira glowered at the blond. "Hey—"

"The bimbo's words aside, by the time the fourteen of them had created the club, Phantom A was already dead. So, to recreate crimes to perfection like him, CC, or 'Copycat', created that type of game. The game was gruesome, and everybody who carried out the plan chose the wrong person so they were punished by death. By the time the school had caught on to what was happening, ten people from the club were already deceased.

"Even then, the school didn't get involved to stop the crime. Neither did the police. All because the Kitoshi's had interfered and told them to let them handle it. The Kitoshi family, if you didn't already know, has high regard all over Kyoto and are the most powerful group. So when their own family had gotten murdered amidst the mastermind's game, they decided to use the rest of the surviving members of the club as their tools to catch him. The leader of the club, Kei Ishikawa, devised a sure to work plan to capture the mastermind and it worked without any further sacrifices." Yasuo let out a breath. "After the event, the Crime Club officially shut-down, the Kitoshi's went on with their lives, and the mastermind was put into jail.

"But five years ago, somebody started up the CRF and created the Crime Games, a set of games where you come up with a sure to work plan for a crime. Nobody found it strange or tried to stop it. How exactly this man or woman brought it back, that's a mystery, but times had past, people had died, the occurrence was nothing but a memory of the past. Nevertheless, the Crime Games continued...and I'm betting that the mastermind behind these current events is using this to torment us."

After finishing his explanation, Yasuo exhaled loudly and a grim silence engulfed the room.

"Kei Ishikawa," Ayame began, meeting his eyes. "Is he your great-grandfather?"

He shrugged in reply. "This story's been relayed countless of times in my family. I've got it memorized forward and backwards."

With a hand to her chin, Ayame directed her calculating stare to her club supervisor. She had thought the man to be tedious, lazy, and dimwitted, and didn't know single thing that was going on around him. But, he really did know more than she could imagine.

"Mr. Nobuo, is this your normal disposition?"

Nobuo seemed startled by Ayame's inquiry. Everyone else in the room seemed intrigued to hear the answer as well.

"Dispo-what?" he repeated blankly.

Yasuo scoffed at his attempt to play dumb.

"Personality," Ayame clarified. "Usually, you're inane and tedious; a failure, really—"

"Hey," interjected the teacher.

Ayame prodded regardless, "But that was an act, correct? What for?"

Before Nobuo could answer, Ryuu opened his mouth, "We're getting off track." The sudden quiet in the room was enough for them all to know where he was going. "How does this relate to what happened to Tadashi?"

Nobuo frowned at his angry tone. He had seen him like this—out of character—back at the Day Camp. It was why he knew for a fact that Ryuu was trying his best to comprehend what had effected his friend so much.

But death was always the harbinger of despair.

"You're aware of Moriko Kitoshi, correct? If you were listening to what Yasuo was saying, you'd be able to piece things together," Nobuo explained, and he knew he succeeded when Ryuu's eyes widened. "Kitoshi— the family which has the most dominance in the city; the family that is feared and revered; the family filled with nothing but geniuses; the family nobody wants anything to do with... Izumi Shinzo isn't what she seemed to all of you. And it was the Kitoshi's who got rid of her."

"Why does everyone keep speaking in riddles?" Akira demanded, her frustration finally breaking through with Nobuo's words. "Explain why you said Izumi...!" She choked at the last words, letting out a shaky breath. "Just tell us what happened!"

Yasuo and Nobuo nodded at each other for approval before explaining what they had known. About Izumi, her relationship to the Kitoshi's, of why she had stolen the planning sheet, her past, and about the male they had encountered the day before.

"He called himself Sousuke Nakurama," Nobuo said, snapping something within Ryuu. "Though, his true name is Sousuke Kitoshi. He came to Yasuo and I and told us that Izumi Shinzo is in danger, then tried to kill us. Since we're not the type to let that happen, we stopped him, but he fled before we could do anything about it. So now, his whereabouts could be anywhere in the city."

"Sou...suke?" Ryuu mumbled under his breath, finding it hard to swallow.

Nobuo spared him a glance. "He said something about a "friend" piquing his interests in this case... I'm guessing it was you."

"Ah, that male," Ayame muttered, recalling the incident with the letter. "He was involved more than you could get out of him, huh. But..."

Ayame raised her gaze back onto the two. She was the only one unaffected by the revelations—opposite to the others who were too dejected to even move or speak.

"Putting this aside for a moment," she stated, "how are you telling us this? From what I know, you two were unaware of what was happening these days. Yet, here you are, filled with more secrets than we could all imagine."

"I'm surprised you're unfazed. It's like you're a robot," Yasuo scoffed back, chuckling slightly at the idea. "Well... Nobuo and I are, I guess, supervisors of some sort. I didn't want to join this club as I told you, as I didn't want to join a club with so many similarities to my great-grandfather's. But Nobuo was the one who made me, threatening me with expulsion.

"Nobuo is a good friend of my family. So when things started getting out of hand, especially with the Moriko Kitoshi incident, we started working together to get some entail on the club so that occurrences similar to the Crime Club were not to happen again. That's probably why we know so much."

Yasuo's tone towards the end was teasing, only managing to irk Akira.

"Then, if you guys knew all of this, why didn't you do anything?!" Tears of regret ran down Akira's face. If she hadn't run from Izumi and listened to her story instead of being afraid and accusing her impulsively, she would've been able to save her. She would've still been alive! "Why didn't you tell the police?"

"I could shoot that right back at you. Your dad is a sheriff, right? He's the closest thing."

Akira winced before hanging her head. Yasuo smirked at her reaction.

"And besides, I bet even if you told him, he'd laugh in your face. There's no connection Moriko Kitoshi has to our club at all, and the planning sheet; who the hell knows what Shinzo even did with that. There's no proof, and the Kitoshi's are the ones involved. If telling the police or anyone for that matter would stop anything, we would've done it ages ago—"

"Proof? Who the hell cares about that damned group!" Ryuu yelled, spitting with rage. "They traumatized Tadashi and even—even killed Shinzo! And the mastermind did away with Saya and Iori! Kiyoshi's gone too! What the hell do you expect from us if we don't go to the police?!"

Despite sympathizing with his anger, Yasuo broke out into a forced laugh. "I couldn't care less about this club now that it's crumbled to what it is. The real reason Nobuo and I stayed out of doing anything is because Nobuo and I treasure our lives. We don't need to stick our noses so deep into this to get ourselves kicked out of this school or possibly killed."

Akira held out a finger angrily. "Even if you did get kicked out of the school, who the hell cares! You can just find a new one! A human life is more important than your tiny school problem, Ishikawa!"

Akira's words took Yasuo by surprise and he went mute. He rotated elsewhere, averting his gaze to the ground in almost a depressive manner.

Haru, who noticed this, pointed out, "Yasu-chin's not allowed in any high school in Kyoto besides this one. He was already expelled countless of times in his life."

Yasuo flushed red. "Haru, you—"

Before they could go on with some unnecessary squabble, Nobuo spoke up, "Leaving me and Yasuo out of this, I advise you all not to do anything rash either. Right now, we're all in danger so it's better if we don't stick our noses where they don't belong."

He gave a long, pointed look to Ayame who simply looked away in an uncooperative manner.

"Yasuo and I are still on standby as it is, and as your supervisor I take responsibility to watch over you guys and make sure there aren't anymore sacrifices. If it comes to it, I'll go against my orders to protect you."

Nobuo's clenched his fists determinedly, and Ayame perked at his words.

"Orders? Who gave you orders?"

Nobuo hesitated, along with Yasuo. Ayame smiled at their reactions, already knowing that they weren't going to tell.

"Well, all right. It seems like I'll have to uncover the rest of your secrets myself." She turned to leave the room, sparing everyone one last peek. "Along with everyone else's."

With Ayame's words ringing in their ears even after her departure, they all somehow acknowledged it.

To put an end to this never-ending repetition of destruction, uncovering the truth of everyone, much as the club's secrets today, were inevitable.