The Porcelain Doll's Story

I was starting to regret replacing the old TV in the Living Room.

Just as every human had their quirks, ghosts had the right to develop strange hobbies too, and Anweina was no exception. This maid, who always stayed home cleaning and washing, had three great passions in life: first, becoming a perfect maid; second, singing "Sin'dorei Dirge" in the Living Room at midnight; and third, crawling out from all sorts of places—especially television screens. The new large LCD TV in the Living Room was little more than decoration to people already used to holographic terminals, but Anweina seemed to regard it as a new toy. Yesterday, she had even crawled in and out of it more than a dozen times in one go, until she got stuck inside. That was truly terrible, especially when the Sphinx happened to be on-screen. I could hardly believe the Egyptian Pharaoh could look that cute.

Early this morning, I first went to the Research Center to check on that "female ghost" currently being subjected to all sorts of research. She—or, more precisely, it—was fairly stable. That thing clearly had little intelligence; even its conditioned reflexes were a complete mess. Two Ravens had tried all kinds of methods to establish communication with it, all without success. According to the two Magical Girls, even an ant should have shown some response after being subjected to those methods, yet the "ghost" continued its rhythm of waking, sleeping, then waking again. All the evidence indicated that it was not an evil spirit, not a ghost, and probably not even the "spirit" Reimu had speculated about. It was merely an energy lifeform, nothing more, with only two or three conditioned reflexes and the ability to move. It had no thoughts and did not originate from anyone's resentment after