The IT department was tucked into the corner of the sprawling office, a labyrinth of cubicles and tangled wires. The sterile walls were adorned with generic motivational posters that seemed laughable under the circumstances.

Dressed in the drab uniform of corporate anonymity—a white shirt, a black tie, and slacks—Ogata sat at his desk, scanning his dual monitors with an expressionless gaze that betrayed nothing of his true purpose. He leaned back slightly in his chair as he pretended to review a spreadsheet. In reality, his focus was elsewhere entirely.

His fingers danced across the keyboard as he was navigating through encrypted folders and back-end systems like a phantom. Heʼd spent weeks creating backdoors and planting subtle scripts that gave him access to sensitive data without triggering alarms. The rival firm he was working for would pay handsomely for this intel—but Ogata wasnʼt doing it for the money. Not entirely. The thrill of outmaneuvering these naive office drones fed something dark and hungry inside him.

His lips curled into a faint smirk as he typed in a new command. Another layer of security bypassed. A piece of cake.

But then, something caught his attention—a faint discrepancy in the system logs. Someone else had recently accessed the same files he was targeting.

Ogataʼs smirk disappeared as quickly as it had come, his features hardening into a mask of feline alertness. Without moving his head, he glanced up from the screen to scan the office floor. The usual cast of clueless characters shuffled about; nothing seemed out of place at first glance, but Ogataʼs instincts told him otherwise.

He let out a soft, almost inaudible chuckle and turned back to his screen, running a subtle diagnostic on the network, tracing breadcrumbs left behind by whoever had dared tread on his territory.

The traces were faint—almost too faint, but not completely invisible. That was a choice, not an accident. A challenge, maybe.

If theyʼre good, theyʼll notice me noticing them. Letʼs see how long it takes.