The old landlord looked at his silent, eccentric tenant, stroked his chin, and guessed, "Don't tell me you liked the haunted atmosphere of my apartment building, so you made these to fit the mood—then you've really gone off the deep end making dolls."
The Puppeteer froze, then hurriedly said, "That's right! I just thought this building was perfect for being haunted, so I..."
But Jiang Xia shook his head, as though he understood the hidden circumstances better than the man himself. "Of course it wasn't for such an innocent reason—Mr. Banchō doesn't like ghosts. He merely wanted to use supernatural phenomena to scare everyone living in this Apartment away, thereby covering up the crime he committed four years ago."
"Four years ago..." Upon hearing that familiar point in time, the landlord and the other two tenants immediately understood. "You mean the woman who was burned into a charred corpse in the park four years ago?!"
Jiang Xia looked at them. "I heard that late at night, you occasionally saw Ghost Fire drifting through the Abandoned Building next door, its flames sometimes orange-red and sometimes bluish-white—but that wasn't Ghost Fire. It was man-made light.
"The orange-red 'Ghost Fire' was the glow of cigarette butts. The bluish-white light, meanwhile, was reflected from the screens of electronic devices someone was using inside the building."
"You mean... someone lives in that building?" The otaku looked at the Abandoned Building next door in surprise. "Someone actually lives in a dump like that, which could collapse at any moment?"
Jiang Xia said, "Ordinary people obviously wouldn't live there, but wanted criminals are another matter—there were two killers in that Murder Case four years ago. One of them was seen by a passerby, who remembered his face. His sketch was later put on a wanted poster.
"If