Kira then went into something of a monologue about how there had to be a dangerous organisation behind the group, and how the two of them would need to be wary of what was coming. He brought up, though, that they would only be in danger if they stole the fruit from a group like this one.
Josefumi pitched a much smarter play. Grafting. Snapping a branch off their plant, whittling down the end, and grafting it onto another one. He then used his own stand to effortlessly demonstrate how they could splice plants together and cultivate their own supply. Astonished at just how versatile the bubbles were, Kira agreed to the plan.
Later, near a parking lot, the two boys tailed Aisho on their mission to steal one of the plant's branches.
The opportunity finally presented itself at a local pharmacy. Aisho was simply doing some casual shopping when Josefumi put on a masterclass of distraction, pretending to be an incredibly enthusiastic customer. He found the item he was looking for and started openly praising it, loudly hyping up its extreme rarity and potency, which were obviously things the rock humans liked.
To force Aisho's hand, he grabbed nearly every single bottle off the shelf, leaving just one behind. Right on cue, Kira stepped into the pharmacy and asked the clerk if there were any boxes of eye drops left. Spooked by the idea of missing out on a rare commodity, Aisho took the bait and quickly snatched the very last box of eye drops for himself.
Paying for his items, Aisho headed out on his way to another lucrative deal. Before he went, though, he decided to try out his newly acquired medicine. The moment he went to use it, the boys initiated their plan. Josefumi strolled up behind him as Killer Queen detonated a bomb planted in a motorcycle's front wheel. That obviously caused a loud, jarring accident that instantly pulled Aisho's attention away.
While he was completely distracted by the wreck, Josefumi crouched in behind him. Slowly, he opened Aisho's transport case, snapped off two precious Locacaca branches, and flawlessly replaced them with ordinary branches from a completely different tree. All the while, Aisho had his vision partially obscured by the bubbles Josefumi had infused into the eye drops.
With the heist pulled off, the boys strolled away, and behind them the same bubbles that had been obscuring Aisho's vision popped.
Dragged back into the grim reality of the present day, Tamaki Damo sat reflecting on how the wall eyes had radically warped the landscape, casually wondering whether it was because they were protecting something deep beneath the earth.
Realising Norisuke was stressing over what was going on, Damo wondered aloud whether it was because his daughters had left the room earlier and never come back. His focus shifted quickly, though, and he started pressing Norisuke on whether or not he knew anything about the Locacaca. He brought up its origin, assuming Norisuke knew about it, and how Yotsuyu had been searching for it. Apparently he had even gone missing while looking for the Locacaca on Norisuke's property.
Norisuke tried to deny the accusation, but Damo pushed further, asking him point blank whether he was the one who had killed Yotsuyu Yagiyama.
Norisuke hesitated for a fraction of a second, and a fraction of a second was all Damo needed. With terrifying precision, he used a crisp one-thousand-yen note to slice clean through Norisuke's left arm, and revealed his stand's name to be Vitamin C.
Damo told him he would start with his daughters, too, if he did not answer the question. Crippled and cornered, Norisuke screamed out the truth. It was him. He had sunk Yotsuyu into the depths of the sea, because he had found out that he was a rock human.
Moving on to the next step of his questioning, Damo said he knew it would have been difficult for Norisuke to defeat Yotsuyu by himself. He guessed that he had not been alone. And knowing he needed to find that man as well, he asked Norisuke who it could be.
To understand how the villains had caught onto this trail at all, you have to sail back in time to the nineteenth of August, 2011.
One day, while returning from the open ocean, Kira pointed out Karera waiting for them on the docks. Apparently she had been relentlessly following Josefumi, something that genuinely confused the both of them, since all she was to him was a fellow classmate. They shared a brief, fleeting conversation about how she already understood something of the way his stand ability worked, before refocusing on the mission at hand. Josefumi noted that the fruits were almost ripe and ready for harvest, but Kira warned him to keep his distance until the official date.
He then told the boy to go and take care of the docking, and Josefumi got up to tie the boat's mooring line to the bollard. He was confused when he noticed that the rope had mysteriously slipped into the water. He went to reel it in, and spotted what looked like wet fingerprints covering the rope. Just across from him, Kira watched a seagull land on the boat, only for it to slip off again a moment later.
Kira could immediately tell that something was not right. For some reason, the boat had become abnormally slippery.
Peering down into the dark cabin, he saw that sitting right there in the shadows were Tamaki Damo and Yotsuyu Yagiyama.
Damo calmly revealed how they had uncovered the deception. Since the day of the thievery, it had been ten months, sixteen days, three hours, and twenty-four minutes.
He elaborated on how they checked the weight of every plant before and after a trade, no matter what. The main reason was that if somebody were to run a scientific test on a plant, it would expose the rock human species and create all sorts of trouble for them. On that day ten months ago, after Aisho sold the fruit, the plant had increased in weight by nine grams. Not much. So they had not really had any suspicions, and had figured it might have something to do with the water and soil content.
He was truly blown away. The truth of what had happened was only revealed to them after the earthquake hit, when the plant had wilted and exposed the two branches that had been grafted onto it.