Remains

Amuro Tooru circled the tree with the old handkerchief tied to it several times, examining it carefully.

Then he vaguely sensed that something was off around the roots.

He crouched down and brushed aside the dead leaves covering the surface, finding that the vegetation underneath was indeed somewhat unusual.

Something... seemed to have been buried here.

After reaching that simple conclusion, Amuro Tooru pondered for a moment, took out his gloves, put them on, and dug into the soil.

A few minutes later, as he looked at what had emerged from beneath the dirt, his movements suddenly stopped.

—A skeleton, already reduced to bare bones, was buried here.

"..." Having spent so much time with Jiang Xia, Amuro Tooru's first reaction was to call the police.

But in the end, he merely fell silent for a moment, then quietly covered it back up with soil and spread the dead leaves evenly over it.

Then he took out his phone, opened his Mailbox, typed out a message, and instructed the Peripheral Members temporarily assigned to him by the organization's Gunma Prefecture branch: [There's something I need you to confirm...]

Meanwhile.

Jiang Xia and the others continued down the path and finally found the filming location where the male and female leads had met in the television drama.

After glancing over the "holy site," the happy Mouri Kogoro was no longer happy.

—Before them stood a blazing red maple tree.

Besides maple leaves, its branches were also covered with red handkerchiefs fluttering in the wind.

Normally, handkerchiefs tied to a tree would not be unpleasant; they might even have a certain charm. But there were simply too many red handkerchiefs on this tree, densely packed together and hanging down in neat rows. Whenever the wind blew, they swayed in exactly the