M Puzzle: Standard Excuses

by Marc and Denis Moskowitz

The six signs do indeed "add up to" something suspicious. The Korean character in the flavortext is Unicode character CAFE (Unicode numbers being in hex); the key to the puzzle is to use the Unicode.

Adding the Unicode numbers of the letters in each sign gives another number which can be taken as Unicode for a letter. (In each case, that letter comes from an alphabet appropriate to the location.)

These unicode glyphs, when lined up and read upside down, read "VOWELS".