They were unceremoniously ejected from the serene sanctity of The House of Serene Bean. The old master, Tanaka-sensei, did not shout. He did not raise his voice. He simply stood at the threshold, his posture radiating an aura of profound, unshakeable disappointment, and pointed a single, tofu-dusted finger down the cobblestone street. It was a silent, devastatingly effective banishment. The navy blue noren curtain swung shut behind them, severing their connection to the world of ancient tradition and artisanal soybeans.
Kenji and Sato stood on the quiet street, the gentle Kyoto sunlight filtering through the leaves of a nearby willow tree. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Kenji could still feel the phantom weight of the dead frog in his hand, a secret so bizarre it felt like a hallucination.
"Well," he said finally, his voice a low, hollow sound.
"I believe that is a new personal record for shortest undercover assignment. Four hours. And in that time, I managed to get myself fired, branded a bad luck omen, and discovered a secret compartment full of… of…"
He couldn't bring himself to say it.
"An anomalous desiccated amphibian," Sato finished for him, her voice a calm, clinical whisper.
She was already scanning the street, her eyes cataloging every window, every doorway, every potential point of surveillance.
"Let's move. We can't debrief here."
They walked in silence for ten minutes, weaving their way through the labyrinthine backstreets of Kyoto until they found a small, secluded park with a lonely wooden bench overlooking a koi pond. The only sounds were the gentle trickle of a bamboo fountain and the distant, mournful cry of a single cicada. It was a perfect place for a quiet mental breakdown.
"A dead frog, Sato," Kenji said, finally letting the full, unadulterated absurdity of it wash over him.
He started pacing in front of the bench.
"A tiny, dried-up, mummified frog. In a secret compartment. In a futuristic-looking bowl. In a 500-year-old tofu shop that is secretly a supply hub for a global mind-control conspiracy. What does that even mean? Is it a threat? A message? Is it some kind of weird Ouroboros corporate team-building mascot? 'Here at Ouroboros, we're not afraid to get our hands dirty… or desiccated!'"
"It's data," Sato said, pulling a small, sealed evidence bag from her pocket.
Inside was the tiny frog, which she had deftly managed to scoop up during the tofu-valanche chaos.
"And all data means something. Let's analyze the variables."
She sat on the bench and pulled her "vintage film camera" from her bag. With a series of practiced clicks, she opened a hidden side panel, revealing it to be a compact field analysis kit. She produced a pair of tweezers and a magnifying scope that attached to her phone.
"Variable one: the container," she began, her voice shifting into the focused, analytical tone of a mission handler.
"The bowl was not ceramic. It was a high-density, non-porous polymer composite. Branded KlearMind. Our first hard link between the tofu shop and Ayame's commercial operation. This proves the shop isn't just a supplier of a raw ingredient; they are integrated into the distribution network for finished products."
"Okay," Kenji said, still pacing.
"That makes a kind of horrifying sense. What about variable two?"
He gestured wildly at the evidence bag.
"The frog!"
Sato carefully extracted the tiny amphibian with the tweezers and placed it on a clean white cloth. She examined it under the magnifying scope, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"Species: Kajika, or the Japanese Buerger's frog," she said after a moment.
"Known for its beautiful, singing croak. It's considered a symbol of pure, clean rivers and streams. A poetic choice."
"Poetic? Sato, it's a dead frog!"
"Symbolism is a key component of Ouroboros's methodology," she countered, not looking up.
"The serpent eating the tail, the snake around the kale. They like metaphors. A creature that symbolizes purity, found dead inside a container for a product that promises clarity. It could be a message."
She continued her examination.
"Condition: desiccated. Fully dehydrated, but the cellular structure is largely intact. This wasn't simple air-drying. This is a deliberate, controlled process. There are no signs of external trauma. It wasn't crushed or poisoned in the conventional sense."
She took a micro-scalpel from her kit and made a tiny, precise incision. She scraped a microscopic sample onto a small slide. A moment later, a reading appeared on her phone.
"Well," she said, her eyebrows shooting up in surprise.
"This is unexpected. The cellular matrix is saturated with an extremely high concentration of sodium chloride."
Kenji stopped pacing.
"Salt? They salted it to death?"
"It would appear so," Sato said.
"They preserved it by mummifying it in salt. A very ancient, very deliberate technique. It suggests a certain… ritualism."
He stared at the tiny frog. A symbol of purity, ritually preserved in salt, hidden in a secret compartment. His brain felt like it was full of scrambled eggs. He sat down heavily on the bench next to Sato.
"Okay. Let's try to think like they do," he said, rubbing his temples.
"If I'm Ouroboros, and I'm sending a secret message, why a salted frog? What does it mean?"
"Salt, in many cultures, is a symbol of purification," Sato mused, now fully engaged in the puzzle.
"But it's also a symbol of corruption, of making the earth barren. A salted field. A pillar of salt. It's a duality. Purity and corruption in one."
"And the frog is a symbol of a clean river," Kenji added, the pieces starting to click together in a strange, unsettling way.
"So… a pure thing, deliberately corrupted and preserved by salt. And it's being sent… where? It was in a bowl. Was it being sent from the tofu shop, or to the tofu shop?"
"The manifest," Sato said, her eyes lighting up.
She pulled up the data from Ayame's computer on her laptop. She cross-referenced the tofu shop's supply logs with their deliveries.
"Here. Every week, The House of Serene Bean receives a shipment of 'Specialty Polymer Kitchenware' from a holding company that traces back to the central Ouroboros labs. And every week, they send out a shipment of 'Artisanal Soy Products' to a single, recurring destination."
"Where?" Kenji asked, leaning in.
"A place called the 'Kansai Institute for Holistic Gastronomy'," Sato read.
"It's a private research facility. Very exclusive. Very expensive. And according to these files, its head researcher is a man with a very interesting specialty."
She brought up another file. It was a personnel record, complete with a photograph. The man had a kind, academic face, silver hair, and wore a pristine white lab coat. His name was Dr. Inaba. And his field of expertise was listed as "Bio-Acoustic Resonance and Cellular Memory."
Kenji stared at the screen. Bio-Acoustics. The science of sound in living things.
"The frog," Kenji whispered, the final, insane piece of the puzzle locking into place.
"The Kajika frog. You said it was known for its beautiful, singing croak."
Sato's eyes went wide with dawning comprehension.
"A symbol of pure sound. Dr. Inaba studies the effects of sound on cells. They are sending him a ritually corrupted symbol of pure sound. It's a message. A status report."
"It's more than that," Kenji said, a cold dread washing over him as he connected it to their previous mission.
"Ayame's students were made perfect. Flawless. But they were also silent. The conflict, the joy, the noise was gone from their souls. Cerebralax doesn't just control the mind. It silences it."
He looked at the picture of the dead frog.
"This is their R&D. They're experimenting with how to silence things on a fundamental, cellular level. And this tofu shop isn't just a supplier. It's a communication hub. A dead drop."
The sheer, beautiful, insane complexity of it was almost too much to bear. They were dealing with a conspiracy that communicated in dead, salted frogs.
"So what's our next move?" Kenji asked.
"We can't get back into the tofu shop. We need to intercept the next shipment."
"The next shipment is scheduled for tomorrow morning," Sato confirmed, looking at the logs.
"A single, refrigerated van. But intercepting it is risky. If we're caught, we blow the entire operation. We alert them that we know about their supply chain."
"So we can't stop it. We can't get back inside the shop," Kenji said, a familiar feeling of being trapped by circumstances settling over him.
He stared at the koi in the pond, their bright orange bodies moving in slow, lazy circles.
"Then we have to get into the destination. We have to get inside the Kansai Institute for Holistic Gastronomy."
Sato was already typing furiously, her fingers a blur on the keyboard.
"That's a hard target," she said, her voice tight.
"It's a private research facility with high-tech security, biometric scanners, and the works. We can't just walk in."
Kenji looked at the picture of the kind-faced Dr. Inaba on the screen. He looked at the file that listed his professional interests. And then, an idea, a terrible, brilliant, and deeply Kenji-esque idea, began to form in his mind.
"Maybe we can't," he said, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face.
"But maybe… the culinary world's most profound and eccentric new genius can." He pointed to the screen.
"Dr. Inaba is interested in the effects of sound on living cells. He studies cellular memory. Well, I just happen to be the world's foremost expert on a dish that contains the biographical memory of a chicken's entire life."
Sato stared at him. "No."
"Yes."
"You are not going to try to get into a top-secret research lab by offering to teach them the philosophy of your accidental scrambled eggs."
"It's not just any scrambled eggs, Sato," Kenji said, standing up, his voice filled with a newfound, if entirely fraudulent, confidence.
"It's the Scrambled Progenitor. And I have a feeling Dr. Inaba is going to be very, very interested in its unique bio-acoustic properties."