Chapter Thirteen: The Phantom Thieves of Hearts

“So sleepy—” Tang Ze yawned in front of the mirror.

He felt utterly drained, yet he still had to return to the café, then secretly hide away to spend half a day cutting up newspapers to make flyers, arrange for their delivery, all without exposing Amuro To. If the news broke, their cover would be blown, and their fledgling venture would collapse before it even began.

So when the café closed, he watched Amuro To leave with a look of relief.

Knowing someone else was even more exhausted lifted his spirits.

The boy in the mirror wore a double-breasted short tailcoat on his upper body, knee-length shorts below, and a scarf around his neck that floated backward like it defied gravity, creating a strangely out-of-season charm.

The most absurd part was the mask.

“Can this even be called a mask?” Tang Ze leaned closer and poked at it. “This is more like an eye patch!”

The upper half of his face was covered by a flat, semicircular visor with no holes for the eyes.

Some kind of high-tech 9S imitation.

No one knew how it worked, but this mask—if it could even be called that—didn’t block his vision at all. From the outside, it looked like a smooth leather eye patch, as if someone had tied a cloth strip over his eyes.

After studying the mask for a moment, then the gently fluttering scarf, Tang Ze finally deactivated his phantom thief persona.

In short, he now had a new skin that let him transform at the push of a button.

He could appear in his phantom thief outfit in the real world and cover his distinct eyes. Essentially, it was a whole new identity.

A good thing, all good things.

Tang Ze crossed his arms over his chest and fell asleep in a particularly peaceful posture.

Now only one thing remained—to give Leon a thorough interrogation in his dreams.

———

While Tang Ze played happily in his dreams, many others found sleep elusive.

On the street outside the Maru family estate, residents whispered among themselves.

Due to the Maru family patriarch’s terrible temper, no neighbors dared to gather and watch, but the walls of the estate were plastered with notices, and small cards littered the streets, making the scene impossible to ignore.

Soft chanting could be heard everywhere.

“‘Greedy’ and despicable wretch, Mr. Maru Tsujirō,” a woman passing the alleyway whispered, leaning toward the paper on the wall.

“You exploit the suffering with money, trample on their dignity, and grind others’ treasures and hard work into dust. All your shameless deeds—we know them all,” an office worker who picked up a card read closely.

“Tomorrow, you will be held accountable for all your crimes,” a servant read nervously, holding the card and enunciating carefully. “Your twisted desires are received. With respect, the Phantom Thieves.”

“Bang!” Maru Tsujirō slammed his fist on the table, splashing tea from his cup.

“Who did this?!” Though over a hundred years old, his roar was full of vigor. “Tear down these trash papers! Destroy them all and throw them away!”

“I don’t know, master,” the butler lowered his head, avoiding the reddening face. “They’re plastered all over the outside walls, on the streets too. The whole block is covered…”

“Where’s the surveillance? The security outside the door?”

“The cameras only caught a few kids sticking them on the door. They said they found the papers on the street…”

Maru Tsujirō’s face turned ashen. He snatched three or four pieces from the butler, crushed them into a ball, and threw them at him. “Useless junk! Hurry and clean everything up!”

“Yes!” The butler hurried out as if escaping.

Panting hard, Maru Tsujirō sank into his chair, glaring furiously at the crumpled papers on the floor.

His wife, Maru Inako, sat across from him, hiding her smiling lips behind a teacup, watching him with cold amusement.

She had vaguely suspected some of his misdeeds.

Was there a single word on the papers that was untrue?

The Maru Group’s business was booming, and Maru Tsujirō was hardly short of a few million yen, yet he repeatedly resorted to dirty tricks, as if dirty money gave him greater satisfaction.

“All right, dear, maybe someone’s just jealous of how well the business is doing and is spreading slander to ruin your reputation,” Mrs. Maru said with a feigned smile. “It’s all arrogant nonsense—don’t get angry.”

Maru Tsujirō glared at her bitterly. “What do you know? If these rumors spread, it will damage the store’s reputation! Forget it, why am I even telling you this?”

Lately, the woman’s movements had become increasingly secretive and distracted at home. Maru Tsujirō suspected she was having an affair and had hired a detective to investigate. Seeing her smiling face only made him more annoyed.

Useless trash everywhere, Maru Tsujirō thought bitterly as he stood and left for the storage room where his collectibles were kept.

More than believing in nonsense about “bearing consequences for all crimes,” he was convinced that these provocations under the name of the “Phantom Thieves” were aimed at his treasures.

Though his methods of acquisition were not always clean, Maru Tsujirō never shied away from displaying his vast collection. Besides being a successful businessman, he was a renowned collector.

Could it be some lowlife who couldn’t pay their debts, hiring others to steal his goods?

Maru Tsujirō’s dark thoughts churned.

In a parallel world unknown to him, a shadowy figure dressed in imperial robes, bearing the same name, wore a grim and terrifying expression. He took a samurai sword from the wall, drawing its gleaming blade.

“Damn thieves, coveting my treasures? I will make sure you come back no more!”

———

“The target has no relevant training background.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’ve gathered over a decade of the target’s life information. The target’s attendance in middle and high school shows no prolonged absences, perfectly matching an ordinary student’s routine.”

From the top floor of the apartment opposite the café, Akai Shuichi listened to his colleagues’ latest updates over the phone, furrowing his brow.

“To shake off all tracking in such a short time, he can’t be just an ordinary kid.”

In front of Akai lay several photographs, clearly snapshots of Tang Ze being bumped into on the shopping street that afternoon.

One showed Tang Ze turning his head in surprise, another showed him raising both fists defensively, and the last captured him reaching out to steady the other person.

“The photos you’ve seen show the target instinctively reacting defensively; his hand and foot movements are coordinated and swift. He clearly has a solid foundation in boxing or martial arts.”

If Amuro To saw these pictures, he would feel a strangely familiar sense.

Isn’t this exactly Amuro To’s fighting style?

“There’s no gap in records from middle school onward, but what about before then?” Akai pondered aloud.

“Shu, the target was still just eleven or twelve years old then…”

“Don’t forget, he is the child of the Tang Ze couple,” Akai switched the phone to his other ear, lit a cigarette with his lighter, and placed the photos in the ashtray, setting them aflame as well. “At eleven or twelve, the target had not yet left their side.”

There was a brief silence on the other end, then a hesitant voice asked, “Would the Tang Ze couple experiment on their own child?”

“It’s not an experiment,” Akai said, drawing on his cigarette and leaning by the window, overlooking the pitch-black street. “The Tang Ze couple initiated their research precisely because of Tang Ze Zhao.

“If there is anything in this world that best embodies their research成果, it is Tang Ze Zhao himself.”