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Somewhere in the park center, the doors swinged open. Some posters, such as "Circus performance on Tuesday!" flew across the entire park. From the bar's entrance, a sharp, rectangular figure sauntered across the park's center, gripping something that resembles a letter. Barley had told him not to open it until he'd reach his Observatory.
"Please, don't let anyone see it, Cosmo." The astrophysicist could feel the desperation in the bartender's voice. What is so special about the letter?
He had looked down at it. It looked like a normal letter, nothing special. Then he glanced at it's stamp, which was definitely something out of the ordinary. It had a star-shaped figure with a strangely carved face in front of it. Maybe it's something associated with the park? Cosmo had wondered why the bartender gave it to him.
Not to mention that Barley was acting kind of... weird today. He didn't even laugh at his puns. Seriously, the ground state burger joke could not be that bad.
Apart from that, he'd nearly spilled the entire Bordeaux bottle from his shivering palms. That's surprising for someone this articulate as a bartender robot. And he'd certainly never hurried as much as to hand something as trivial as a letter, let alone beg him to take and open it where nobody sees it.
Was Barley threatened to give him the letter? Now thinking about that, Cosmo wished that he had just asked him if he really was.
He'd at least provide a hint.
Maybe even a hint about whoever was threatening him.
But knowing that he unfortunately cannot change the past, he sighed and moved on.
"Home sweet home.", Cosmo said, slamming the door of the hidden entrance in the Observatory. The room was mostly filled with pitch black and was almost entirely empty except for a small control center dedicated for detecting items other than just celestial bodies. Honestly, Cosmo had asked the Starr Park staff for more, but anything that came out their mouth was literally no more than "Stop nagging us" in polite form.
He examined his letter for a short amount of time before he put the letter down. Cosmo then began running his hands through the control center. His palms sweeped across the keyboard buttons, hoping to find one that would let him finally open his letter without anybody actually knowing.
"Find it, Cosmo. It must've been here, somewhere!" He said, desperate to find it.
He had finally found it. His left hand felt the unbelievably dusty blood-red pebble that sat at the very top of the keyboard. Cosmo didn't even remember the last time he had actually pressed it.
He had turned around for a second. Nobody is really there. "Here we go." Cosmo said while he pushed the button.
The ceiling's platforms have formed silver domes around the surveillance cameras. Along with the domes, several screens of the control panel have also activated, presenting a plethora of pre-recorded actions of Cosmo doing literally anything other than opening suspicious letters. The domes seemed to show those recordings from it's round interiors. "I knew that it would come in handy!" The scientist roared. He sat at the chair right next to the infrared device of the control center.
Cosmo's hands trembled. He grasped the letter and ripped it open, although preserving the stamp, putting it inside his pocket.
"Dear C.O.S.M.O,
I hope that this message finds you well. I am writing to you not as your acquaintance, nor as someone associated with you, but as a person who has simply came in possession of the information that I have yet to say." Suddenly, a red spark had appeared on the infrared device's monitor. A color never seen after a certain fateful day.
"In my understanding, N.E.B.U.L.A. was gone a long time ago. I will not presume details as to what happened, but what I can tell you is this. N.E.B.U.L.A. is still alive, and is safe at her place." Cosmo had nearly fallen off from his chair. Nebula!? Nobody knew about her disappearance. How do they know?
"As I know that this news may come with a weight of it's own, I simply won't deliver it through correspondence alone. We can meet at Bizarre Circus, on Tuesday at 5 in the morning, where we can speak privately." Bizarre Circus. As far as he knew, there would be a circus performance in here on Tuesday. Why had the writer chose to privately talk in a place where a performance would be happening? Especially with a topic so emotionally charged as this...
"Yours faithfully, Alpha Canis Majoris."
Who is Alpha Canis Majoris? No ordinary person would name themselves like that. Maybe it's a pen name. Cosmo got up and left the hidden room to the Observatory hall. The hall was ginormous in size compared to the secret place; up to the ceiling, hundreds and thousands of constellation models reside across the entire dome. One of those constellations is called "Canis Major".
"My memory is getting rusty, isn't it..." He sighed. On the side of the constellation, the star model floated around. Cosmo had immediately recognized it as "Sirius", the brightest star in the night sky. Cosmo pulled out the stamp, and held it in front of him, right next to the floating Sirius model. He's heard of the guy before, but had never met him face to face.
"How interesting..."