Sara and Jun - The Valley of Dead

Chapter 1: The Missing One

(Narrative: Araka (Sara) Peni)
After finishing the last page of my homework, I placed my pencil on my desk and stretched my arms.
To relieve my stress, I took a look at the window and let myself being covered in the sunshine.

Finally I get everything, very nice, eh? I thought, as it seems like I don't have any homework left now. So what's the next step? Well, maybe I can try the game Leana sent me weeks ago.

I rushed into the living room, and plugged the game disk into the console. If I play the game every day, by the end of the summer, I can participate a joint stream with Leana.

As my game console set up, the phone rang. It shouldn't be stranger, I thought, as all communication within my home was protected. If anyone wanted to dial to our place, they need to type the access code that changed monthly.

"Hello, this is Peni family's residence, who are you looking for?"

"Hello, is that Araka over there?"

"'May I clarify who are you first?"

"This is Atsuki Sukeo, your brother Jun's friend. I was looking for Jun, and it was surprising that he was not there. Anyway, here I have something important for both of you."

Something important? For both of us? Did we get some new missions from SAIR? Oh jeez, my plan with my friends was ruined.

"If you check your SAIR accounts, you should see the notification that there will be a meeting tomorrow morning. I know, it's an emergency. Sorry for not telling you in the first place." I turned on my phone and checked the message, and it was true. That sounds like a real emergency, I thought, I should have turn on the notification for my mailbox before.

"Do you have any idea about what the meeting is about? I'm just a bit lazy to check the message."

"So have you heard about the missing high tech entrepreneur?"

What he was referring to was the guy who had been missing for a couple of days in the mountainous area of Pinzen near Bakju. The first time I heard about this incident was ten days ago when I was surfing on the livestream website. The incident was first picked up by SBC's news commentary show "News to Answer". Though sounded like a serious news commentary program, the program actually looked more like a talk-show, with the hosts took the weirdest news suggested by the live comments. One of the comment requested covering this case, which at time was not widely known and little information was released. During the show, couple speculations was drew based on the limited information, from being kidnapped by the mafia to being silenced by some politicians for leaking classified information. It was surprising that though the show uncovered the interesting relationship between the company and the government agencies, the speculations did not come from some conspiracy websites but a licensed public broadcaster, and the recording of that day's show was still available on the websites with the comment section opened.

"Definitely. But was it a real deal?"

"That's correct. At this point, from RBC and the Republic Daily, almost all news agencies were covering the incident. My social media was now flooded with a mix of news reports and conspiracy theories. Many of my close friends also asked to talk about my opinion on this. Jeez, I'm just a rookie SAIR provision agent, and even asked the senior ones about the issue, they still have no clue where to start the investigation."

If SAIR officers had no clue, then this must be the real deal. It was actually surprising how long it took for SAIR to take it seriously.

"So what will be our roles during the investigation?"

"I don't know, probably doing some volunteer jobs. I don't really think these senior officers would let us handle this problem. Still, please tell Jun about this. If he were in the meeting, then everything will be easier."