THE STORY · EPISODE 03
In the Log Archive District, the clocks were arguing.
When the tower on the right struck nine, the one on the left struck only once. The plaza clock showed the middle of the night, while records streaming down the walls displayed morning times. Only the second hands kept turning, refusing to listen to anyone.
“Did we eat lunch before we came here?”
Securidon asked in complete seriousness.
“No.”
“Even if the clocks disagree, we know that much, don.”
Normally, Patchron would have had something to say. Now he silently gripped the handle of his first-aid kit.
An attendant emerged carrying a bundle of long, narrow sheets. They were logs—records of when, where, and what had happened. Yet each time a page turned, the order changed by itself.
“Someone got in from an unfamiliar location right after the update. Look here.”
Beside the indicated time, a black shadow swelled with delight. It swept up another sheet and deliberately slipped it between similar records.
Patchron stepped forward.
“Maybe I did something wrong.”
“Don’t decide that yet.”
Mana’s own firmness surprised her.
She turned back to the attendant.
“Have the original records been kept separately?”
“Um...there are untouched records farther inside.”
The answer came from a young man behind the attendant, a notebook held to his chest. Short black hair, round glasses, a checked shirt beneath a gray cardigan. His voice was quiet, but his pointing hand was certain.
“I’m Sapo. I’ve been recording what I observe. I’m still preparing for certification, so I can’t give battle commands, but...”
“Showing us where the records are really helps.”
As Mana spoke, Sapo lowered his notebook a little. Yuki took a bundle of sheets with her free hand, and together they carried them to a worktable.
They brought copies to the table, not the originals.
At first, Mana thought she could simply arrange the times from top to bottom. But she stopped when she compared an entry at nine-oh-three with another at twelve-oh-three in the morning on the same date.
One said JST; the other said UTC.
“Aren’t those nine hours apart...?”
She opened a verified contact to consult the doctor. He was speaking with an attendant in another district, but answered immediately.
“The displays use different time standards. Nine-oh-three JST and zero-oh-three UTC on the same date can represent the same instant.”
“So it doesn’t necessarily mean something happened nine hours later.”
“Exactly. The standard used to write the time is part of the record too.”
The encyclopedia displayed an Attack question. How would she turn this uneasy feeling into a method of investigation?
OPTIONAL QUESTION · 03-A1Two clocks, one instantTwo logs on the same date show 09:03 JST and 00:03 UTC. How should you investigate their order relative to the update?Open illustration & choices
Interactive answer checks and saved progress load with JavaScript. You can continue reading without answering.
“D. Keep the originals and align the standards in copies. Look at the devices and actions as well as the times.”
Without erasing the original notation, Mana wrote comparison times in a neighboring column on the copies. Sapo checked them against the original rows, while Yuki put down labels to keep different materials apart. Once the records were reordered, failed attempts from before the update appeared.
The same account had several failed sign-ins within a short period. After that came a successful sign-in from an unfamiliar device. Some information indicated a distant location, but that alone did not identify who had operated it.
“So we can’t just write ‘culprit’ because the location is different.”
“What do you know, and what is still unknown?”
At the doctor’s question, Mana divided her notebook into two columns.
Verified facts on the left.
Things still to check on the right.
They compared the device identifiers with records of the equipment the user normally used. They also arranged to check with the user through a separate, trusted contact. The suspicious attempts had begun before Mana’s group started the legitimate update.
“At least, these records alone don’t show that the patch caused it.”
When Mana said that, Patchron’s fingers loosened on the handle.
“Are you saying it just because you want things to be all right?”
Mana shook her head and put the copy in front of him.
“Look. I might have misread it too. Let’s check together.”
Patchron read in silence for a long time. At last, he gave a small nod.
Episode 3, Illustration 1 | Comparing records and time standards
The shadow beneath the table reached out to steal the papers.
Securidon slid in his shield. This time, rather than trying to protect everything alone, he called to Patchron.
“Take the left-hand bundle, don!”
Mana held down the bundle on the right.
“Check the logs in chronological order.”
She could not read the English floating over the records in one breath. Her tongue lost its way in the middle of the long word chronological.
Securidon opened his mouth.
“Chrono...rollo-rollo...”
“Don’t roll it away.”
Patchron’s remark loosened the tension a little.
Chronological. In the order things happened. Holding on to that meaning, Mana read to the end.
“Check the logs in chronological order.”
She put the papers back into their actual sequence.
Failure. Failure. Success from an unfamiliar device. Changes to settings afterward. The legitimate update had begun later still.
“Securidon, follow the verified sequence and break down the shadow’s footing. Patchron, support the route for moving the records!”
Under Mana’s certified command, the shield advanced beneath the desk. Sapo and Yuki protected the materials on the side where people passed. The false sequence hidden among the sheets lost its place, one page at a time. The shadow had known that if it scattered the records, people would fill the gaps with assumptions.
“We still don’t know this part.”
Mana did not force an answer into the final blank space.
Before that blank, the shadow stopped.
She had refused to decide what could not yet be decided. That too was a judgment that stopped the trap.
Securies lit the space beneath the desk. A small wooden body emerged from the shadow, patterned like growth rings, wearing a brown detective’s hat and carrying a large magnifying glass. Before adjusting his hat, the new companion looked at the tabletop.
“I like that blank.”
“Even though there’s nothing written there?”
“It shows where we don’t know anything.”
He hugged the magnifying glass to his chest.
“Logrin. I like reading records. But if it isn’t in the record, I don’t know it yet.”
He sounded so definite that Mana laughed. COL-023: Logrin was entered in the WS Encyclopedia, bringing the companion count to three.
Sapo noted the moment of registration in his own notebook.
“Are you making an encyclopedia too?”
“No. This is a record of what I saw. Becoming your companion and my own qualification are separate things, Mana.”
He even checked his own position before writing it down. Mana entrusted him with the edge of the next document.
Episode 3, Illustration 2 | Logrin and a record that leaves room for the unknown
Outside, the clocks had not become perfectly synchronized in sound. Each tower had its own time standard. But now the signs explained the differences.
Showing different times was not, in itself, a lie.
Mana thought about that for a long time.
At the plaza exit, an attendant was about to stack two notices on top of each other. Logrin called out.
“If you overlap them, we can’t see the standard on the lower one.”
The attendant placed them side by side for comparison. The clocks still displayed different times, yet the earlier unease faded. Mana realized that the whole world did not have to be changed into the form she knew best for it to become understandable.
Logrin peered through his magnifying glass at Mana’s notebook.
“This record has no timestamp.”
“It’s a companion’s name.”
“Then leave it blank. There’s no need to rush to a conclusion about a name.”
His wooden body swayed in the breeze, and a tiny leaf rustled.
Perhaps her own slowness could look like a mistake if it was measured only by someone else’s ruler. That did not mean doing nothing was all right. She wanted to learn to show, for herself, what she was comparing and what she did not understand.
Patchron came beside her.
“Thank you for earlier.”
“It wasn’t me. We had the records.”
“For not deciding I was the cause before you looked at them.”
Mana capped her pen.
“I want to keep doing that.”
“May I come to the next district too?”
Sapo asked after shifting his grip on the corner of his notebook three times.
“It’s reassuring to have someone looking with me.”
Mana answered, and Yuki nodded.
“Neither of us is certified yet. Let’s find what we can do too.”
Securidon’s stomach growled.
With a solemn expression, Logrin wrote down the time.
“Why are you recording that, don?”
“Because it definitely happened.”
While everyone laughed, Logrin’s magnifying glass alone stopped at the edge of a sheet.
After the successful login from the unfamiliar device, someone was trying to remove authentication protections in the Settings Maze.
He showed Mana the line.
“There’s more. We shouldn’t pretend we didn’t see this.”
END OF EPISODE 03