It was a cool September morning as the Izanagi Incorporated van drove past a back drop of farm land. Yu Narakami yawned as he tried his best to stay awake. He had been driving for several hours now and his friends had all fallen asleep during the night. With nothing else to entertain him Yu decided to run through their new case again.
Since graduating from high school, Yu and his friends from Inaba have started their own mystery solving group. With Naoto in charge of picking out their cases they had traveled across Japan solving all sorts of mysteries. Primarily though they were looking out of suspected shadow activity. Sadly they had not run into any activity until now.
Naoto had come running into their small office in the outskirts of Tokyo just as everyone was getting ready to leave for the day.
"It would seem I have finally found a mystery worthy of our special talents," she said with a small smile spreading across her face. "A small town off of Yurihonjo City in the Akita prefecture has run into a bit of trouble. Junes has recently built a store in their town and that Junes is reporting disturbing occurrences. Every morning they open the store to see that it has been ransacked. Refrigerators unplugged so food spoils, fine china smashed on the ground, and packages ripped open."
"No offense Naoto but this just sounds like another boring case. It's probably just a bunch of kids having fun trashing the place," sighs Yosuke. He is leaning back on his chair focused more on balancing the pencil on his nose than listening to Naoto explain yet another lame case.
"Normally I'd be inclined to agree with you Yosuke, in fact before I watched this,.." Naoto holds up a VHS tape," I was thinking the same thing."
"Wait a minute," interrupted Kanji ." You mean to tell me that we own a VHS player? Why the hell didn't they send us a DVD like normal people?
"For the love of steak Kanji, we have explained to you several times that not all stores can afford digital security cameras," shouted Chie as she pounded her fists into her desk. Time had not dulled her temper in the least.
"Yeah, but this is Junes! They can afford the damn Imperial Palace if they fucking wanted to," countered Kanji. He stared at Chie daring her to find a comeback.
"They are cheap bastards, what do you want?" Yosuke finally said after the staring contest between the two had become to unbearable to stand.
Naoto coughed slightly in her hand, " Yes, well if we could...get back on topic." Kanji and Chie eventually gave in and focused as Naoto started to play the video.
As the tape started they immediately recognized Junes' electronics department. They watched as the store closed and all the lights were turned out. A few minutes later they see movement in the far corner of the screen. A black shape sweeps from the tv section and down the aisle to the rest of the store. After a minute or so several more shadowy shapes make their way across the department. Shaming can be heard in the distance.
"Holy crap...it's really shadows." Yosuke says barely over a whisper. The group stares silently at the screen as realization dawns of them. They finally had a case of shadow activity.