Not a detective

The entire area is filled with a dense network of pipes, as well as various computers and mechanical structures. The "pulse" of this building probably comes from here.

In addition, there are many desks, chairs and workstations for office use, arranged neatly, and it is estimated that there are fifty or sixty employees.

However, there is no one here now; it's completely empty.

The overhead lights were no longer constant, but flickered intermittently, accompanied by a sharp alarm sound, like an underground air-raid shelter that had been attacked.

Compared to the so-called "Dragon Palace," he felt it was more like the Umbrella Corporation from "Resident Evil."

However, the employees were actually on guard against those who had broken in.

Higashion Suetsuki had already disappeared without a trace. Upon closer inspection, she was actually looking through the employees' locations, seemingly flipping through some documents and materials.

He himself said, "Detectives don't conduct on-site investigations," but when he went to investigate, he acted like a real detective...

Asakawa Riku also tried to flip through the materials, but he quickly ran into trouble. Most of them were in English, which gave him a headache.

His English level is at most that of a high school student preparing for an exam; it would be too much of a stretch for him to read professional materials, not to mention that they contain a lot of technical terms.

He glanced at Chizuko furtively, and Chizuko shrugged, indicating that she was powerless to help.

This guy's area of ​​expertise isn't even in this field.

So he had to give up, but Asakawa Riku still found a lot of interesting things, such as the name tags on the table and their photos.

Perhaps because the employees working here are completely isolated from their families and the outside world, most of them have photos of themselves with their families on their desks, which makes the investigation much easier. Asakawa Riku immediately recognized the faces of those people as familiar. Without a doubt, they were the "staff" he had seen at the Shutenkan in the past few days.

They are indeed staff members, but not just waiters, waiters, drivers, musicians, and chefs; these identities are all disguises.

Their real work was indeed in this underground facility... which matched all the previous guesses.

There were also quite a few non-Asian faces among them. Asakawa Riku had initially remarked that the Shinonome family was indeed very international, employing so many foreigners, but now it seemed that this had been premeditated.

However, he still has no idea what the true purpose of this underground facility is.

The first thing he noticed was that Yuki's condition was not quite right.

"What's wrong?" Asakawa Riku turned around and asked with concern.

I initially thought the child was just too scared to have seen any bloody scenes of fighting and killing, but upon closer inspection, it seems that wasn't the case.

She was frightened by the surrounding setup.

Yuki's eyes widened, her breathing rapid. She looked around in disbelief, backing away repeatedly.

"Brother..."

As if he had found a stable source of peace, he finally calmed down after holding Asakawa Riku's hand.

But her trembling lips uttered an unbelievable sentence: "I feel like... I've been here before?"

"what?"

Asakawa Riku was surprised. He thought to himself, how could this be? This is Kyoto, after all. So he said, "Could it be some kind of 'déjà vu' feeling?"

This should be a very common psychological phenomenon. Some people will suddenly feel "I have been to this place before" or "I have experienced this thing before" at some point, as if they have dreamed about it. But when they think about it carefully, it is still vague. Some people even regard this feeling as a kind of "prophetic" ability.

In scientific terms, this feeling of déjà vu generally arises when certain parts or features of perceptual episodic memory match past experiences. In other words, a similar scene in reality corresponds to a scene previously imagined by the brain in memory, and with the added effect of psychological reinforcement, a feeling of déjà vu occurs.

But Yuki shook her head, rejecting the concept:

"No...it's not a hallucination or a dream. I have indeed been here before. I've been to this place before...when I was a child."

"When?" Asakawa Riku pressed.

Her words were filled with deep fear: "Six years ago, it was six years ago. Brother, you should remember... the story I told you."

Asakawa Riku's eyes widened instantly.

Yes, he could never forget.

On the snowy mountain, before Yukie passed away, she told him a story that he had promised to remember well.

Young Yukie, due to a family tragedy—her parents' divorce—seeks her mother's love and comes to the research institute where her mother works.

She was entertained there but was sent home. That night, the "Snow Woman" erupted, destroying her father, stepmother, and a baby.

After this, Yukie's abilities awakened, and her personality began to split. Kazamatsuri Akihisa adopted her and she became a shrine maiden.

Asakawa Riku certainly remembered this story.

"Wait, I don't understand..." Actually, he did understand, but the sheer volume of his thoughts and disbelief made it hard to comprehend: "You mean—"

But Yuki's eyes were resolute. She surveyed the underground facility with unease and fear, then said emphatically:

"Yes, the Dragon Palace Palace... should be the research institute where my mother worked back then."

Winter of the Demons: Chapter Thirty-Three - The Disappearance of Childhood

...How could that be!

Asakawa Riku instinctively wanted to say that.

But faced with Yukie's unwavering determination, he changed his approach:

“Think about it… This is Kyoto, Mount Oe. Your old home was in Tokyo, right? This is at least 400 kilometers away, and you have to climb a mountain. You ran away from home alone when you were a child. How could a little girl walk 400 kilometers to get here… And we’ve been searching for this hidden underground facility for so long. How did you find it all by yourself?”

He doesn't even need to think; he can immediately point out a series of inconsistencies. If this is the truth, then not a single clue makes sense.

It takes him five or six hours to get here by car.

Even running 400 kilometers at full speed would push him to his physical limits.

It's unimaginable how Yukie could have walked all this way by herself when she was seven or eight years old.

Moreover, since the Dragon Palace is so heavily guarded and hidden, how did she know that her mother worked here?

Yukie covered her head, her brows furrowed, and her words came out in broken sentences:

"...I remember, I was walking down the street back then, not knowing where to find my mother. I was lost on the streets of Tokyo when a woman on the roadside called out to me. She was a little older than me...and very beautiful. Although I can't remember what she looked like anymore, she asked me where I was going, and after finding out, she gave me directions..."

She looked up, her eyes blank, as if recalling an experience from when she was six years old: "After I turned the next corner, it seemed like I was in front of this facility."

The girl who gave directions...?

Could it be the incarnation of the Snow Woman?

No, that's not right. Asakawa Riku immediately realized something was wrong. Even if he had the superpowers of a Yuki-onna, the characteristics of those powers were "freezing and snowfall," not instantaneous teleportation.

The ability to move over a distance of 400 kilometers, transfer living people, and not even require any "signatures" is something even the Spider Woman couldn't do back then.

If such a superpower really exists, it would be incredibly powerful.

Asakawa Riku still wanted to find some reasonable explanations:

"Could it be that there are two similar research institutes? After all, with such white walls and high-tech buildings, it's easy to mistake one for the other. And judging from your description of that girl, her memory doesn't seem very clear, so she might be mistaken. Or perhaps the research institute in Tokyo is a replica of the Ryugu Palace, and one of them is a branch of the other?"

To everyone's surprise, Yukie quickly shook her head: "No...no, although my memories are indeed unclear, I still remember that—"

She pointed to the photos in Asakawa Riku's hand.

“I still remember what those people looked like… They were my mother’s colleagues, the researchers at the time. I remember them, the way they wore their white lab coats…!”

Yuki even called out the names of a few of them. After all that, Asakawa Rikuya had to start to believe her.

"Asakawa-kun, as I told you before, the phenomenon of 'disappearance' is especially likely to affect children."

At this moment, Chizuko interjected, her expression calm, seemingly unsurprised by these words: "Perhaps some kind deity saw how anxious Yukie was looking for her mother and helped by teleporting her here. That kind of thing is beyond the capabilities of superpowers and monsters; it could only be done by something far more powerful."

Riku Asakawa, however, did not think so: "A benevolent god..."

Chizuko smiled calmly:

"The standards of good and evil of the gods are different from those of humans. Their help to humans may lead to disaster, while their evil deeds may sometimes transform people. Fate is unpredictable."

Their ambiguous conversation was only halfway through when Shinonome Suetsuki seemed to have finished her search, tossing something high into the air:

"You might be looking for this."

"Hmm?" Asakawa Riku casually took it. It seemed to be a work badge with a person's name and photo on it. The access level was D, and it looked like it couldn't open any doors.

But this low-level researcher greatly surprised him, and even Chizuko was not immune to it, as she also came closer:

"So this is ah……"

The employee badge they were looking at read:

The name is 【Suzuki Sho】.

Asakawa Riku and Chizuko exchanged a glance, their eyes telling each other that they hadn't forgotten that familiar name—their former school doctor.

Yes, the criminal who dug a cellar under the school to bury bodies, built a private operating room, and engaged in illegal organ trafficking has been taken away by the police.

He's probably still in jail. I heard he's been sentenced to death and is awaiting trial for murder and other crimes.

I remember the police officers who came to give the award said that it involved a criminal organization... Could they be referring to Ryugu Goten?

"No wonder he chose to dig a basement at the school; his inspiration came from his workplace."

Asakawa Riku seemed to be deep in thought.

Chizuko had thought even deeper: "The school doctor is probably their limbs, used to dispose of corpses of dubious origin. The organs are probably recycled and used to generate revenue... The source is Kyoto, and they are specially transported to a school in Tokyo, probably disguised as food and frozen. This is a well-organized and counter-surveillance-resistant industrial chain."

Asakawa Riku sneered, "I didn't expect it to be such a coincidence that we both ran into each other."

Although the name "Suzuki Sho" is very common and there are probably many people with the same name, there is a photo on the name tag. He leaned closer to examine it carefully and, sure enough, he didn't mistake it for someone else.

The man in the white coat in the ID photo is Mr. Suzuki, who appeared in the school clinic and was also the guy who was taken away by the police car.

At this moment, Shinonome Suetsuki suddenly said:

"...Ah, don't get so close, I found that in the trash can."

"what!"

No wonder it smelled bad; Asakawa Riku quickly moved it away.

The mischievous detective laughed and said, "Well, there's nothing I can do about it. They probably didn't want it anymore, so they just threw it away, and I just happened to find it."

"Next time, you should say that in advance."

Asakawa Riku helplessly threw it on the ground.

Suzuki Sho was probably abandoned by Ryugu Goten, since he had been arrested by the police and became someone no longer needed, which is why his employee badge was thrown away.

He glanced at the detective.

Although it's unclear how Shinonome Suetsuki knew about the "school doctor's" affairs, it's not surprising anymore, since she has superpowers...

However, this at least gave him a clue: this research institute must be hiding something dirty, a chilling truth.

At the same time, Yukie stood up. As if she felt a calling from the depths of her being, she slowly walked forward.

Finally, she arrived at the door of a room, which was also tightly sealed, but she only stopped there.

Her fingers slowly caressed it...

"This should be my mother's office, if I remember correctly."

Winter of the Demons: Chapter Thirty-Four - The Truth of the Past

Asakawa Riku saw that the Dragon Palace Palace was connected to more than one room, with three underground levels, stacked one on top of the other like a cylindrical well.

Asakawa Riku could still hear the uneasy breathing and heartbeats behind the door. Although they dared not make a sound, they still could not escape his perception.

These people are probably the employees in the photo. After receiving the alarm, they hid in their offices and locked themselves in.

They must have already known that all the guards had been wiped out, and they were terrified of the intruders.

...Asakawa Riku had no interest in going up and settling scores one by one; he didn't have the time to do that.

Those who are guilty should be punished, but the most urgent task is to find out the truth and understand the whole story.

Yukie's "former mother" would be a good candidate.

Asakawa Riku didn't go in immediately. Instead, he glanced at Yukie and asked softly, "Are you alright? Would you like to leave for a bit?"

He worried that the girl might not be able to handle what was about to happen.

Xuehui lowered her head, her bangs obscuring her eyes. At this moment, she was indeed experiencing extraordinary torment and hesitation, as if she were standing at a turning point in her life.

She anticipated that if she pushed open this door, she might face things she would regret, but if she missed this opportunity, she also felt that she would miss something.

Finally, she made a decision.