Compared with the other toy people, the old man looked much stiffer. He sat completely motionless, while everyone else moved around on their own.
Once the girl and the puppet had taken their seats, the meeting began.
Karan emerged through the door behind the girl, and the scene was more or less a reenactment of what had happened that day.
Just as I was wondering about it, the stiff old man seemed to come to life. Like the other toy people, he began to speak and move.
I looked at them, then at the two empty seats.
Wu Ling and I were missing.
That should prove neither of us had been caught. Neither our bodies nor, much less, our souls.
As for the old man...
I looked at him and thought back to when we had parted ways just now.
After that little town collapsed, had the toy spirit caught both the old man's soul and his body?
That seemed to be the only reasonable explanation.
I felt a little sad.
He had at least spoken with me and offered some advice.
Now he was dead, and I didn't know what to do. Bringing him back to life without thinking it through didn't seem right.
I made a circuit of the room and found that its furnishings were much like what I had seen in the dream. It was basically a copy of the girl's room. But I couldn't find any of the dorm rooms from the Exorcist Association, nor the corridor where the sealed things had been kept.
I flew out of the house and stood on the roof, looking down at the streets around me.
The scene on the streets was the same as when I had first arrived. Everyone in the town had been turned into toys.