"So, when can you leave this place?"
Pushing aside his swirling thoughts, Director James asked with a sour expression, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
"I can stop asking what you're doing on the ship and will cooperate with your actions as much as possible, but at least let me know when it will end."
The man across from him gave a short, dry laugh. "Don't worry. We have no interest in following you to film some crappy movie on the high seas. If all goes well, we can say goodbye around July 19th, Director."
July 19th. James quickly calculated the date in his head. It was the day after tomorrow.
It was also the first day he had scheduled for the official filming of the movie to begin.
Tomorrow's main task was to let everyone familiarize themselves with the set inside the cruise ship and check the actors' mastery of the script, especially the hundred extras who were complete amateurs. He had worried about them from the start.
Most had never stood in front of a camera before. If they could not even grasp the basics of blocking and timing, if they froze under the lights or stumbled over simple marks, the final result would definitely fall far short of what he wanted to present on screen.
The whole project, already stretched thin by budget cuts and egos, would collapse into something amateurish and forgettable.
"Why the day after tomorrow, though?" James pressed, his frown deepening. "The pens were only distributed today. Do you only need one day to find Kaitou Kid?"
The Penguin's subordinate leaned forward slowly, elbows on the table, his expression turning unfriendly. A faint scar twisted at the corner of his mouth when he spoke. "Hey, James. That's not a question you should be asking, is it? Telling you the date was already out of respect for the Boss liking several of your previous movies. A little courtesy so you wouldn't spend the next two days pacing and overthinking. But if you ask another stupid question like that, I'll make sure your head never has to think again."
Gulp..
The threat hung heavy in the air, cold and final. James felt a chill run down his spine and settle in his stomach. His throat tightened. He had no choice but to shut his mouth.
"A-Alright.." He trembled slightly and averted his eyes to the patterned carpet, focusing on the swirling gold-and-blue design until the nausea passed. The cabin suddenly felt smaller, the air thicker.
...
"You're asking why it's July 19th?"
On the open deck of the luxury cruise ship, Tim stood alone by the railing. The salt-tanged wind tugged at his jacket and carried the faint metallic scent of the sea. Waves slapped steadily against the hull far below, a rhythmic, almost hypnotic backdrop to the quiet conversation.
A few minutes earlier, shortly after he finished his call with Darren, Oracle had contacted him on her own initiative. She had not bothered with greetings. She mentioned the date straight away, tying it directly to Kaitou Kid's notice.
July 19th. Exactly the same time the Penguin's subordinates had mentioned for taking down Kaitou Kid.
"Tim, your earlier thinking was correct," Oracle said, her voice steady through the earpiece. "The key to cracking the notice really is the Atbash cipher."
She recited the relevant part slowly so he could follow along.
"quartz, Flame, Ocean, breeze, Among the 26 letters reversed from head to tail, Find the nineteenth day and night, I shall board the glory of maculage, And personally pluck that cruel flower of hope."
Tim had previously tried applying the Atbash cipher directly to the four keywords, quartz, Flame, Ocean, and breeze. That produced the string of meaningless letters: "jfziga, uoznv, lxvzm, yivvav." After that, no further information could be deduced.
It had felt like a dead end, the kind that made him question whether he had missed something obvious or whether Kid had simply layered too many misdirections.
"Actually, you had already solved it back then, Tim."
"Huh?"
"Yeah," Oracle continued. "It's just that Kaitou Kid played a small trick that kept us from seeing through it immediately."
Hearing those words, Tim's heart suddenly skipped a beat. He gripped the railing a little tighter, cold metal biting into his palms.
Oracle had just confirmed the date in Kaitou Kid's notice was July 19th. July was July, which happened to match the first letters of the transformed string: jfziga, uoznv, lxvzm, yivvav.
"An acrostic," Tim murmured, almost to himself. "Although this deduction should be correct, there was no hint in Kaitou Kid's notice pointing to this. Why do only the first letters have meaning, and what do the remaining letters mean?"
He propped his chin on one hand and stared out at the dark horizon where sea met sky. The line was invisible tonight, swallowed by moonless black.
"You're wrong, Tim. Kaitou Kid did leave a hint."
Oracle gave a different answer. "The 26 letters reversed from head to tail doesn't just emphasize the Atbash cipher. It's also telling us to pay attention to the first and last letters."
"Wait." Tim straightened slightly. "You said the first and last letters? The first letters give us July, that's fine. But what does the last letter sequence 'avmv' refer to?"
"It's not 'avmv'," Oracle corrected gently. "It's 'vvam'."
"Vvam?"
Tim showed a puzzled expression.
His brows knitted together as he mentally rearranged the endings: the last letter of jfziga was a, uoznv was v, lxvzm was m, yivvav was v. No: reading the final letters in order gave v (from yivvav), v (wait, no).
He reversed his thinking. The string ended with ...z, m, v, v? Oracle was right. The sequence of terminal letters, read forward, formed v-v-a-m.
He could understand "am" on its own as meaning before noon, but what was with "vv"? Did it represent a specific time?
His mind jumped to Roman numerals first. V was five, but VV was not standard. No repetition like that existed in proper Roman notation.
"I know you must be thinking of Roman numerals right now," Oracle said, as if reading his thoughts, "but that's wrong. We should use Babylonian numerals to interpret it."
She did not keep him in suspense and revealed the answer directly.
In Babylonian numerals, a sexagesimal system is used, employing only two types of cuneiform symbols: a vertical wedge representing 1 and a chevron-like symbol representing 10.
English letters, of course, do not exist in the Babylonian numeral system. However, the cuneiform symbol representing 1 closely resembles the letter "v" when viewed in certain orientations or simplified drawings.
If "vv" is seen as the superposition or combination of two such symbols, then it represents the number 2.
Substituting this back into the "vvam" combination resulted in "2 am."
Two o'clock in the morning.
"Perhaps the similarity between the two symbols is a bit of a stretch," Oracle conceded with the faintest trace of amusement in her tone, "but you should know that the Atbash cipher originated in the Babylonian region. Even the source of 'a.m.' can be traced back to the Mesopotamian era. So using Babylonian numerals here fits the theme perfectly. Kid clearly enjoys these layered historical nods, huh?"