Chapter 11: a secret under the table

Once our eyes met, I looked and pointed down at the table then back up at him. He nodded, receiving my information, he ducked down below the dozens of party goers.

I gracefully slouched down, and while doing so, I stepped on my mother's right foot. My mother, who was too entwined in her own conversation with my father's uncle's cousin's nephew's former roommate, to notice that it was me. The timing was bad, well, not for me, but for the waiter who happened to be right behind my mother when I stepped on her foot. My mother shocked, said "well, I would never," and gave him a death glare. The wrongly convicted waiter looked baffled and confused, but bowed and said "I beg your pardon madam." I have to tell my mother later that it was me and not the waiter, but later, my mom is too scary to confront when she's angry.

Our eyes met again under the table.

"What are you doing here?" I said. Both of us were surrounded by too many of the sitters shoes, high heels, flats and loafers were everywhere. Although it was slightly less loud than it was before from under the table, especially covered with the thick table cloth. The sentences and words from those above us were muffled, making everything they had to say indistinct. Vice versa for us. No one else can hear what we have to say from under the table.

"Oh, you know, I came to see if there's gum underneath any of the tables, my job as the secretary never ends." He playfully looked around, "no gum in sight."

"Thank you sir Suoh, I wouldn't have been able to go on if you didn't show up." I dramatically sighed.

"No thankyou's are needed Miss Melony, it's my duty." We both laughed underneath the table.

Suoh loosened up a bit, but then he stiffened remembering what he came here for. "Melony, I'm sorry to be bothering you while you're with your family, but clamp security guards in the west wing of the school caught a glitch in the security cameras." My eyes widened. "It happened during the morning announcements yesterday between 8:00 and 8:15 AM."

"Cat Eye," I murmured. The thief has finally made his entrance.

"Exactly, within those 15 minutes, he disabled the security cameras all in the west wing and replaced the current time footage of when he snuck into the school with pretexting footage of another day." Suoh paused, conflicted with the next thing he was going to say, "In order to do that from the outside of clamp, he would have had to hack and break through clamp's fire wall online."

"But clamp has an impenetrable system, right? This can't be possible." My worries were getting ahead of me.

"Exactly, there was no sign of anyone hacking into the system outside of clamp," he sighed.

"Outside clamp, than that means," I stiffened myself, "someone from the inside let Cat Eye in."

Suoh silently nodded, "Either Cat Eye has someone working as an insider for him at clamp, or at the very least he manipulated a guard with bribery."

I didn't stop to hesitate for a moment, I immediately pulled out my handy clamp-in a-nutshell pamphlet. "Suoh," I opened up the pamphlet searching for the exact thing that could help us. Then I pointed to a fairly large building on the east side of campus, indicated on the map. "Right here, this is where the Clamp archive is. I remember that you said Cat Eye used to be a resident here at Clamp. There had to be others with him. Family members, a mother, father, siblings, anyone, with any relations to him, a thief can't trust any stranger. It has to be someone they know, someone they trust to keep their secrets."

Suoh nodded. "I know, it's a longshot, but when I saw that picture of Cat Eye as a child. He looked so happy. There had to be a person who cared about him."

"We've already searched through the records of Yoru Kuraidesu, the name he used to go by, and there is not a single person here on campus with any relations to him." He slowly stopped and pondered about this idea. "The online clamp archive gets updated every several years, while newer information is added the precedent ones are pushed farther, until they are permanently sent to the physical archive to make room for newer information." He stared off and looked up at the underbelly of the table (with no gum on it whatsoever!).

"We've haven't been searching in the right place," I blurted out.

"Uh, I feel like such an idiot, I think the chairman's laziness is rubbing off on me."

I heard gleeful murmurs from above that cake was being served to all the guests. I stuffed my pamphlet back into my purse and crawled my way back to the surface from underneath the table, I turned my head around, saying "well, are you coming with me or are you going to wait for the dessert to come around?" Waiters were serving slices of chocolate cake to each of the guests, and some have already received cake at our table.

"Well, I don't like sweet things to begin with," said Suoh.

"I'm sure the archive will be more suited to your liking," I teased.

"I agree," he said. We both rushed out from underneath the table. While doing so, I accidentally bumped into a waiter who then dropped a slice of chocolate cake on my mom. "UGHH, you just don't stop do you!" my mom infuriately said to the waiter. "But—it was—it wasn't me!"

"Now honey comb calm down." Dad wiped off the chocolate cake from my mom's dress. "There is nothing on earth sweeter than you," he said while gazing into her eyes. "Oh my dear."

"I should have just taken the night off," said the waiter with a single tear streaming down his face.

MANY TEARS LATER

Suoh unlocked and opened the doors to the archive. Suoh, I, and at least more than I can fathom, generations of clamp students, residents, and workers laid out in front of us, as well kept books and documents. Clamp's history, and its legacy is all here.

"One of the privileges of being on the school board is unlimited access to any facility on campus after school hours," said Suoh.

"Very impressive," I said.

He suddenly stopped and turned my way, "the chairman hasn't stopped."

"What?" I said, confused.

"The chairman hasn't stopped searching for Cat Eye, day and night, he's gone without rest. But he's been keeping the whole thing secretive from me and Akira. Probably because he doesn't want us to get hurt. Ugh, he just wants to shoulder all of the burden on himself. We're here too."

"It sounds like you all really care about each other." Suoh blushed and continued on. I smiled, thinking of how much I want to protect my family, Yukiko, and Ebihara. The clamp school detectives have been so generous to me, Nokoru, Suoh, and Akira, I want to protect them too.

Suoh guided me towards sections of where we might find some valuable information. One book after another were of students that graduated from clamp school. I checked some of the yearbooks that Yoru was in, there were actually several through these yearbooks. They were pictures of him playing soccer with his friends, participating in a school play, in a relay race, and another of him in a cooking class next to another student, whom I've seen with Yoru in several other photos.

"Suoh, out of all the pictures of Cat Eye, there is just one person whom he is with the most." Suoh pointed out another picture of the two together, it seemed to be taken at their high school graduation ceremony. Yuro's expression seemed different, more tired, and darkened eyes with any hope drained out of them. Next to him, was his friend we've seen many times with Yoru. He was the exact opposite of Yoru, energy beamed out from his eyes. One other thing caught my attention about his friend, the cufflings on his coat, the silver buttons on each wrist. I looked down and took the silver button off my shirt. I held up my button to the picture. "They match."

Thank you for reading! I'm going to try to write more chapters of TGF and hopefully finish it soon.