9 PM: I did a small walk around Haruka Watanabe's home. She had been hit by the truck 3 months ago. The house was a small two-story building in a suburban region; it took me quite a while to get to. There was blue light coming from the windows on the first floor. I sneak-peaked inside through the window to find a man in a wife-beater, probably in his sixties, sitting on a couch with a can of beer watching "Samurai Blue": the Japanese national team playing against South Korea. A couple of beer cans sat next to him on a coffee table and a beer bottle was in his hand.

From what I have gathered on Haruka, this man was her father Hiroshi, a white collar worker in the private sector, at least that was the information he wrote about himself in a business social network.

I evaluated the situation. I could try impersonation to get inside, but that would be hard. I could not pose as a maintenance worker to pretend to fix something. I was European and I had no knowledge of utility companies, not to mention that I lacked equipment for disguise.

I could try to break in during the night. But bedrooms usually are on the second floor in this type of house. One creak of an unoiled door where Hiroshi sleeps and I will get spotted. The second option was to break in during the day. But after the recent fiasco with Nakamura, I really didn’t want to break in while the sun was up.

There are many ways to get someone out of their homes. Fake a gas leakage, claim to be from pest control, previously infesting the house with pests, send a tour voucher for the weekend, or a fake invitation to somewhere and even make a fake call from an emergency service requiring fast response.

That’s how one can do that working in MI5 - a Security Service operating inside their own country. Not to mention that they can also ask the police to arrest someone and hold them for the night, to release them with apologies a few hours later.

There were issues with that. I couldn’t fake an emergency call or an invitation, because I was unable to stop Hiroshi from calling the person I was claiming to be. I couldn’t pretend to be from utility companies, and even if I bought him a one-day vacation, I doubt that he would take it. I could also send the police on him, but if the government was involved in the case I would just alert them.

I looked at the TV through the window. It was the 35th minute. Games took 90 minutes with a break for 15 minutes. So I should have had an hour to scoop the second floor, and ten minutes till the break.

"I probably shouldn't do it" I told myself, but the drive was pushing me forward. I was clearly not acting rationally, but how else could I infiltrate the place if the man left the house probably only during the day and slept upstairs where the living rooms were at night?

I looked around to see if I could enter the second floor. The rooftop had a nice terrace and a side ladder to access it, and there was a balcony on the second floor. Big trees covered the front of the house. This was going to be the easiest infiltration ever; I just had to be quiet and careful.

"Gloves on. A fishnet mask on. Medical mask on. Infiltrator's kit in the pocket. Are you ready George?" I asked myself. "Yes, after all, I am George, George Yossarian" I answered myself.

I waited till no one was walking by and hopped over the fence and ascended the ladder. Getting to the front edge of the rooftop, I slowly descended, putting my legs on the balcony railings, and then to the balcony itself. I looked around, and it was all clear, I wasn't spotted.

"High-trust societies are beautiful!" I thought to myself, remembering how the UK stopped being one during my lifetime.

I looked at the balcony door. It was a one-sided euro-door that had no door handle on the outside.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Why? Because fuck me, that's why." I whispered to myself.

I pulled out the lockpicks again, pushed the pick through the gap, and painstakingly slowly lowered the pulls for the door to open. It took around 2 minutes.

I looked around in the process, and all was clear. I was sweating now and the medical mask and gloves didn't make my life easier.

I sneaked in and tried to close the door behind myself, but it wouldn't fully close, leaving a gap, probably one of those doors that had hinges misaligned and required a good push to close. Why? Because life wasn't all sunshine and daisies.

I was in a corridor. It had 4 doors and a ladder leading down. No sounds were coming from either door, only the loud voice of the football commentator from the first floor. No lights were on.

The toilet and bathroom were the first, the second was the master bedroom with a king-sized bed, and the third room welcomed me with air so stale I felt it even through the mask. It was a cozy room, compact and cluttered, about 6 tatami mats in size. I sneaked in. An inactive lava lamp was placed atop a wooden study desk unnaturally organized with a laptop, some books, and a pen box. I turned on the flashlight at its lowest and put it in my mouth to keep my hands free.

Against one wall there was a small bookshelf with sorted light novels and manga. "Only the villain queen can stop the tyranny of The Hero with the power of love" Tomes 1 to 5. "My happy reincarnated life as the smartest librarian can't go without adventures" Tomes 1-9. 3 copies of each tome. I quietly giggled at the sheer length of the names of the books and preferred not to read the names of the other titles so as not to laugh out too loud.

To satisfy my curiosity, I opened a manga called "Endless Love Reincarnation Where I Change My Species to Find My Lover"; on page 2, a young girl was hit by a truck and died, getting reincarnated to another world as some winged humanoid.

"Why is the truck drawn in a cute manner? Whatever," I murmured.

I put the book back and returned to make observations.

Various fantasy anime figures stood in curated poses on the shelves mirroring her favorite characters. All of them carried different magical staves. On the opposite wall, posters of "My Last Story" and "Two O'clock," j-Rock boy bands, gave me a hint of her musical taste.

Her futon was neatly folded and placed in the corner, to free up space during the day.

A kotatsu was just standing there in the middle of the room accumulating dust. Her desk had a laptop with an expensive drawing tablet next to it.

I opened her laptop, and booted it up. 30 seconds later I was greeted with one user account, "Haruka Watanabe" which had a password requirement. Why? Because why wouldn't it have one? It was a girl's laptop, and of course, it had a password.

I took out a USB drive from my infiltrator's kit and plugged it into the laptop whispering, "Thank you for not updating your operating system for ten years Miss Haruka."

The screen flickered as the malware began its work while I rummaged through her desk drawers. I wasn't comfortable rummaging through her clothing, so I skipped the wardrobe: Spare earphones, pens, pencils... a lot of black pencils sharpened with a knife.

The next drawer presented me with pictures, 3 albums of high-fidelity pencil-drawn pictures of places and people in a manga style, with the corners bearing a sign #HaruRise drawn on them.

My phone buzzed indicating that a 15-minute break in the football downstairs began, so I hid myself and stopped moving.

Second Buzz in 15 minutes told me that the football was on again, so I proceeded towards the laptop. It was unlocked. "Please people, never update your systems,." I whispered to myself with a grin on my face.

The last thing she worked on was some manga in a drawing program. I looked at the name of the file "Smartest librarian can't go without Adventures part 10 v2.1". Huh? She was a 22-year-old comics artist, not a NEET as I initially assumed. I already copied her email and passwords to the drive, so I plugged it out and prepared to finish up.

"Who the Fuck are you?" - A man's voice rang from behind.