A trace of fear showed on the man's face. He quickly closed his eyes, adjusted his expression, and steadied his breathing, which had grown hurried after those words.
"He told me in his letter that the boy seemed to have replaced the transit station's manager and begun ruling that area. It was real rule: he established his own unique regulations and began clearing the living and ghosts out of the area in accordance with them. Those rules amounted to a curfew. Before the boy came looking for him, he'd already heard some of the neighbors talking about it. By then, he'd stopped living in his old house. I'd rented an apartment for him in a nearby town, since we were short on time and apartments had neighbors all around. He learned about the curfew from them, as well as from the local newspapers and media.
"At first, it was just a local news story. The local police had found a body in a trash can. It actually went back to shortly before the transit station incident. A little while before that, there had already been a first victim. He was a homeless man, found dead in a trash can, his body twisted. He'd apparently been killed and then thrown in there. The police began investigating. In fact, when they found his body, they'd looked into that possibility, but ultimately concluded he'd died of natural causes. After that, similar incidents began happening one after another. The victims were first homeless people, then pedestrians walking alone. The police thought it was the work of a serial killer. It was only after the transit station incident that things got out of hand. People who were out together at night, young people at bars, started disappearing from those bars. Others simply vanished on their