Shinju reached the office early the next morning and stopped the moment she stepped inside.
Kenji and Davin were both asleep on the office sofa with papers spread across the front table and one marked file half-fallen onto the floor. Someone had practiced until the body gave up before the mind did.
For several seconds, Shinju only looked at them.
She had worked hard already. She knew that.
But seeing this made something tighten in her chest.
'If they're staying like this, then I can't afford to move like a guest either,' Shinju thought.
She put her file down, lifted the fallen pages, and let them sleep for a little longer.
When they finally woke up, she did not waste time.
Before speaking, she opened the front windows, straightened the marked files, and set two fresh stacks on the desk so the room looked less like a battlefield and more like a place still worth working in.
"I talked to two more places last night and one more this morning," she said. "But there's a limit to what I can do from my contact list. I've almost exhausted it. We need someone in the field gathering leads, names, buying access where necessary, and building a wider contact net."
Davin raised a hand immediately.
"I can do that part," he said. "There are brokers who sell lists, middlemen who know factory buyers, and clerks who talk for the right amount of money. I know the type."
Kenji looked at him. "Can you actually pull something useful out of that?"
"If I carry cash and patience, yes."
Shinju gave a short nod. "Then do it."
"Don't just collect names," Kenji said, rubbing sleep from his face. "Collect reasons. I want to know who buys, what they fear, who signs, who delays, and who only pretends to listen."
Davin answered at once. "Then I'll bring back people, not just addresses."
Sera, who had just come in with a paper bag of breakfast, heard enough to add, "If he brings names back, I'll sort them by district, product type, and contact level. At least then the next wave won't be chaos."
While the office side was trying to push forward, Bruno was sinking deeper into frustration.
He sat at a table with one hand pressed to his temple while Rafi and Toma stayed nearby. His head had been hurting since morning. Worse than the pain, however, was the news that had reached Gonda first. Another district gang had apparently been approached by the same so-called organization.
That had made Gonda furious.
And when Gonda became furious, Bruno's future shortened.
"If we don't move first, Boss will skin me alive anyway," Bruno muttered.
One of his runners arrived not long after that with a cafe owner dragged in beside him. The man looked nervous from the first second. Bruno dropped a rough portrait sketch on the table.
"Look carefully," he said. "Have you seen this old man?"
The owner stared at the sketch.
Then his expression shifted.
"Yes," he said. "I've seen him."
Bruno leaned forward.
"Where?"
"At my cafe once. Maybe twice. He came with another man."
"Who?"
The owner swallowed. "Kenji. I know the other one because he comes around from time to time."
Bruno's eyes narrowed at once.
That was the first clean line he had found in days.
"When?" Bruno asked.
"A few times across the last stretch," the owner said quickly. "He didn't talk much. The younger one handled more of it."
That was enough for Bruno. He already had the name. If he watched the right place or followed the right face, the rest could be dragged out by force.
He sent Rafi out immediately with two instructions: put eyes near the cafe again and start asking where Kenji worked when he wasn't there drinking coffee and pretending to be ordinary.
Back in another part of the city, Adam had made progress of his own.
After repeating the middle-aged disguise enough times, he had started doing most of that makeup work himself. It was not perfect yet, but it was good enough to reduce his dependence on other hands. That mattered to him more than ever now.
There was another weakness he needed to solve too.
Communication.
Since giving up his old phone, everything had become slower. Telephone booths worked, but they could not remain the answer forever. So Adam decided to get something safer.
He went to a phone shop near a wholesale lane where boxed handsets, chargers, batteries, and wire bundles filled every wall. The owner was a narrow-faced man who smiled the moment he saw cash.
"What kind do you want?" the man asked.
Adam kept his voice low. "Something simple. Hard to track. Hard to mess with. No useless features."
The owner let out a short laugh. "Nothing is magic. But if you want less risk, then don't buy smart. Buy empty."
He pulled out a keypad phone.
"No internet, no apps, Removable battery. If you keep almost nothing inside it, then there's almost nothing to take from it. People love complicated phones. Complicated phones love betraying people."
Adam listened carefully.
He paid extra for the handset, no browsing features, and nothing unnecessary left active.
The owner even removed the branded sticker from the back cover before handing it over.
"If you really want to be careful," he said, "keep it off unless you need it. Battery out when you're done. Never carry your whole life inside one device."
Adam slid the battery in, checked the menu once, then removed it again immediately just to feel the habit settle into his hand.
'Good. Simple is safer.' Adam thought.
Before leaving, he bought two prepaid recharge slips under cash as well. If one number became dirty, he wanted the habit of replacing pieces fast instead of clinging to them.
He was ready to go to the office.