8 Cryptic Messages and Mafia Discoveries

The girl that stood next to the sofa stared at me sternly, causing me to receive a nostalgic amount of embarrassment. I scratched my head slightly and rose up to hand her the pretty scrambled up piece of paper. But right before I handed it over to her, I happened to read the contents of it. The writing on the paper seemed to have been written by a pretty well-versed person, on the paper it simply stood

"Pd Pb Sg Sm V Eu Hg.

1,1,2,3, ,

5^2.

Lillie."

The 'Lillie' was written in really sloppy cursive, but that wasn't the main concern right now. What the hell was this?

Before handing it over, I made an awkward comment

"Looks like you have some Chemistry and Mathematics homework. Sorry!"

Upon hearing my comment, the girl lit up. The girl had brown hair, light-green eyes, and light armor in a reddish orange color. Can't say it looked bad since that was pretty much my favorite color.

The girl asked

"Wait, you know what that is?"

I was taken aback a bit and answered in surprise

"Yes…?"

The brown-haired girl grabbed onto my shoulder and said

"That's great. The truth is that for the past 2 days, I've been trying to figure out what it was. I found it scrambled up on the side of the street. I was curious as to what it was so I decided to try and find out."

I looked at the grabbing hand and silently nodded. I then proceeded to say

"Well, sit down and we'll go through it."

The Girl and the girl slowly moved towards the sofa to sit down. Seeing that there wasn't any space for me to sit comfortably at, I decided to stand up. But the brown-haired girl noticed my decision and placed her hand on the spot next to her to indicate that I should sit down. I was a bit too shy to really refuse so I just sat down next to the two unnaturally attractive girls. I was a bit uncomfortable at first but decided to focus on the paper instead of my current geographic position. I started explaining what I thought

"From what I can see, the first set of letters are symbols for chemical elements. The second row is Fibonacci's sequence and the third row is just a simple squaring of a number.

The fourth row is just a name."

The Girl seemed to go along with my conversation pretty well, but the other girl was utterly confused. She immediately said

"Look, I barely understood what you just said. But, how is that a name? To me, it's just a bunch of scribbles."

I chuckled a bit and said

"It's just in bad cursive, haven't you ever seen something like it before?"

She looked at me and said

"I think I've seen something similar back in my hometown… More importantly, how the hell do you know stuff like that!? Where do you come from?"

The Girl decided to respond and said

"I don't know if it matters, but we're from Higashi."

The brown-haired girl got an impressed look on her face and explained

"I'm from Zhong province. I almost forgot! The name's Hiruma Karobu."

The Girl laughed lightly after Hiruma introduced her province, but stopped shortly after. After looking confused at The Girl, I turned around and reached out my hand to greet her. I said

"My name is Kasoha Iichiro. Nice to meet you."

Hiruma also reached out her hand and shook it, showing that it was also a custom in this country to do so. The Girl, not being used to such things, also reached out her hand hesitantly and said

"I'm Yukari Hanamura. Pleased to meet you."

Hiruma proceeded to greet The Girl and I continued with my speculations.

"If these really are chemical symbols, I should probably go through what each one is.

Let's see…

Palladium,

Lead,

Seaborgium,

Samarium,

Vanadium,

Europium,

Mercury.

Those were all of them, but I don't really see how they're relevant. I guess we'll start by figuring out the math first.

Because there are two empty spaces, I think that we're supposed to fill in the gaps of Fibonacci's sequence. Since Fibonacci's sequence uses the previous numbers to add, I think the sequence would look like 1,1,2,3,5,8.

Since the spaces are empty, I assume that we're supposed to use the numbers that filled them.

5 to the power of 2 is 5 times 5, so it equals 25. If we put them together, we get the number 5825. Does that mean anything, Hiruma?"

Hiruma seemed completely baffled but answered the question

"5825… Isn't that what people call the Zakuya district?"

I responded

"Really? So we have some sort of location..."

The Girl just interrupted and said

"How do you know those periodic elements like its nothing!?"

I simply answered

"Well, I was pretty good at Chemistry in--"

I interrupted myself and whispered

"our former world" so that Hiruma wouldn't hear.

But I changed the topic and said

"Never mind that, let's figure out what they mean. Firstly, let's write them down on a piece of paper."

I took a blank piece of paper and wrote them down. I looked at them with a focused look, I was trying really hard to figure out what the meaning could be.

The other two girls also leaned in to try and figure out what it could mean. I started thinking about how they were maybe supposed to direct me to a mine or something, so I asked Hiruma

"Is there some kind of mine in Zakuya district?"

Hiruma thought for a bit and then said

"I don't think so… There are just buildings and stuff there."

So that was a dead end, huh?

Maybe the individual metals have some meaning.

I asked

"Do any of these elements mean anything?"

Hiruma grabbed the sheet of paper and stared at it for a couple of seconds.

She then said

"Palladium is the Mayor's last name, I think. I'm pretty sure Seaborgium is some kind of shop, and I think my friend once mentioned that you can buy metals like Europium at the shop.

Hmm…

Oh yeah, Mercury is a mafia here in town, isn't it?"

I suddenly did a double take to make sure I heard that right. The air around us suddenly grew stale, and I said

"There are… mafia in this city?"

Hiruma looked at me dumbfoundedly and said

"Of course there are, you must know about 'The Big Three'."

Upon receiving this new piece of information, I started speculating once again. The Girl interrupted my thinking time and said

"Maybe these are some assassination plans on Mayor Palladium, sent by Lillie, who's perhaps some higher-up in the organization."

Hiruma lit up and said

"That makes sense! But if that's the case, we need to hurry up and message the mayor!"

I was still thinking but decided to voice my opinion

"No, I don't think so."

The Girl got a confused look and asked

"What do you mean? The 'lead' could refer to lead bullets, you know. It all makes sense."

I shook my head and said

"Then what would the 'Samarium' and 'Vanadium' refer to? Also, what would the 'Seaborgium' and 'Europium' mean in that scenario? Why would they need to post their own district number if they're just trying to message some other teammate?

No, I think there's some other meaning to it."

The Girl looked at me defeated and said

"Then maybe there's some pattern there."

I instantly got activated one she said that. I started looking at the letters themselves instead of the whole picture, so to speak.

After looking at it for a while, I finally realized what they really meant.

I looked left to right with a smug smile to indicate that I had figured out the whole thing. Hiruma instantly asked

"You've figured it out?"

I grabbed my pen and said

"Yeah, just look at this."

I wrote the same elements again but this time with some of the letters capitalized.

I then wrote the true meaning under them. After my writing, the paper looked like

"

Palladium,

LEAd,

SEaborgium,

SAmarium,

Vanadium,

Europium,

MErcury.

P LEA SE SA V E ME

PLEASE SAVE ME."

This gave the whole situation a whole new meaning. It basically went from a casual assassination plan to a full-blown rescue request. Once the other two observed what was written on the paper, they both got "aha"-looks on their faces. I would say that this interpretation made more sense.

- Although this would mean that the sender of this paper is quite intellectual, I'm pretty sure almost no one here knows the periodic elements that good. But because of that reason, I'm a bit suspicious if this actually is the intended meaning. It's almost too good to be a coincidence, but people don't know that much here, do they?

But with my current intelligence, that's the best meaning I can decipher from it, so I'll have trust the school system of these foreign lands. -

"Someone needs our help!" The Girl suddenly exclaimed, quite loudly. People around the lobby, who already were disturbed enough thanks to our previous scene, stared at us with irritation oozing out of their looks. The Girl put her hand up as a quick way of apologizing and sat down in clear embarrassment.

Hiruma said

"Wow, that's really clever. But I guess there are more important things that come up upon figuring out the meaning."

I nodded my head and said

"Yeah, I think we can conclude that the 'Lillie' that needs help is trapped somewhere in the Zakuya district, that's the easiest part to figure out. I think it's also pretty safe to assume that the people who kidnapped her is the gang 'Mercury' that was mentioned before. But we're still left with a couple of questions, aren't we? Like, is this letter some sort of trap to lure out the smart people so that they can be used by said gang? Or if it now is a genuine letter, how are we supposed to know where she is? I don't think gang hideouts just have a big sign in front saying 'Welcome in, Random Gang residing here". And even if we do know where they are, how are we supposed to actually rescue her? We're three people if Hiruma tags along, against a whole gang. If we do defeat them, it'll have devestating effects on multiple levels due to complicated social situation---"

I was planning on finishing my essay on why this was a really hard plan to execute, but a disapproving stare disrupted my concentration and got me an F from what should've been an A level assignment.

All The Girl did was stare at me for a couple of seconds and say

"Are you really going to say all of that after what we just went through?"

After reflecting upon what had happened only six minutes ago, I responded

"I wasn't really saying that we shouldn't do it, I also want to save this person. I'm just saying that we should go through the possibilities of this scenario and---"

The Girl interrupted me once again by standing up hastily and grabbing my arm along the process, she then said

"Great, let's go. The more time we waste here, the longer Lillie has to suffer."

I scoffed and said

"Easy for you to say. You have nothing at risk in this situation. Me though? I risk my second life on even something so minuscule like this. I have to think this through"

The Girl just smiled and said

"Don't worry, I'll protect you if it comes down to it."

I sighed with a disappointed intent and said

"fine, sure… Whatever..."

The Girl started dragging my unenthusiastic body along with her, but before she left the room she turned around and asked

"Hiruma, are you coming?"

Hiruma smiled and said

"Interesting. It seems like it'll be an interesting experience, so I'll gladly tag along. It seems like I'll get to see this mystery solved myself."

After getting her confirmation, The Girl continued outside the door with me still getting dragged. Hiruma followed closely.

- I really don't want to do this whole thing so soon, We didn't even go through any of the possible situations that could follow this conflict. The Girl's super strong, so she can probably escape if it comes to the worst of it. Hiruma looked like quite a capable person as well, so the same could be applied to her.

BUT I GOT THE WEAKEST POWERS OUT OF ALL OF THEM!

Not only that, but they also nerfed my hearing and such.

And still, I'm supposed to 'not worry' since she'll 'protect me'? I don't know if I can trust humans that much.

I mean, how great is a power where once I use it, it makes me regret my existence and my earlier naive self who thought it would be such great fun to be reincarnated into another world with great powers.

Damn that guy, he should've just picked heaven instead!

But what's done is done, and I will try and make the best out of my current situation.-