Late Night Massacre

She could tell that there was something off.

Ever since the mysterious serial murderer had come into the light, things have felt differently among the Phantom Thieves. It seemed strange to think that, being that she had only been with them for a while, but she could feel the slight tension amongst them.

Yusuke was a clear sign. One day, he would seem like all his energy had been drained from him and his usual enthusiasm for anything he never experienced would be gone, then the next, he would be back to normal like nothing had happened and would avoid them anytime they tried to question him about his behavior.

Akira was a bit off too, but not as much. The man was already a bit strange, but Morgana had told her about how almost every night he would wake up to find the teenager getting dressed to go help Yusuke with something.

But Akechi was the biggest clue that something was up. Ever since he came to the meeting that day with those bandages wrapped around his neck, he was a completely different person. He seemed like he was always on edge and would jump whenever they would approach him but he would always say it was nothing. Though he didn't falter in his battle prowess, it was obvious that he was never really there and his attention was always elsewhere. But it was most noticeable in how he acted around Akira. The man who once practically threw himself on their leader with no hesitation or care of who saw him now hardly did so much as look in his general direction. He seemed to distance himself from their leader in every situation they were in.

None of it made sense to her, and while the others seemed to try to brush it off, she wasn't so willing to do so.

So, for the first time in a while, Futaba found herself up in the middle of the night sitting in front of her computer trying to piece together the pieces of this incredibly confusing puzzles. It had taken her almost an hour, but she was finally able to hack into Yusuke's phone. Hacking into Akechi's phone was simple since she could implant a bug directly onto it, but she wasn't able to get her hands on Yusuke's phone, so she had to do it the hard way. But she finally managed to do it.

"OK," She stretched her arms and cracked her knuckles, "Let's see what you got in here."

There wasn't too much of initial interest to be found, since, other than the group, Yusuke didn't really socialize with others and he didn't have that many apps on his phone. So she decided to delve into the place that seemed to hold the most data: the text between him and Akira. The moment she opened that up, it seemed to stretch on for several pages.

"Yikes. I get that couples text and talk a lot, but this is pretty excessive."

She scrolled down the messages for about half a minute before coming across one message asking for Akira to come to help him with something, "I guess this is what Mona was talking about," She kept scrolling, finding more of the same message. But as she did, she noticed something... off. Looking back through each one, she noticed what it was, "Why does each one have a different address? Wouldn't you want to meet at the same place?" After taking a look at the different addresses, another feeling welled up within her, "These look a bit... familiar... ... Hold on..." Pulling up another tab, she searched up the recent string of murders.

The police had set up a website dedicated to the murders. It was updated with each new disappearance, noting the last location they were seen and the estimated time of their disappearance in hopes that they could find someone who saw the person committing the act. They would also update whenever one of their bodies were discovered, as the public still held onto the blind faith that these missing girls were still alive. As of now, the list consisted of 88 murders.

After looking through some of the most recent locations and comparing them to the ones in the text messages, the realization sank in.

"... They're the same..."