Ma En sat down on the sofa in the neighbor's apartment — a sofa that had clearly not been selected to fit its owner's frame — while the neighbor remained standing to one side, his head tilted slightly as if studying the body on the coffee table, or perhaps listening to the conversation in the corridor. Ma En rested his chin on his hand and worked through the voices outside, trying to piece together each person's identity, background, and thinking — as if somewhere in the exchange were secrets buried at the very bottom of their minds. Occasionally he glanced at the neighbor, but the room's darkness concealed everything except the man's eyes, and those eyes right now were full of emotions too layered to read.

Neither of them spoke. Even the faint scraping sounds Ma En had been hearing earlier had gone silent. The air felt fixed in place. He listened, carefully, and sketched the scene in his mind: the officers and the manager going in and out, opening and closing doors — into Room 4, a circuit, and back out — then the disagreement over whether to enter Room 5, the veteran officer overruling the young one, the manager refusing to complicate things further. All of it was predictable. All of it was what he'd expected.

Without a body, without any trace of murder, no case existed — and the person who'd called it in was now potentially liable for a false report. Under normal circumstances that would be the end of it. But the officers outside, while clearly reining in their colleague's behavior, kept circling back to the word "body" in their language — a stubborn, pressing insistence that wouldn't let go. The manager, for her part, seemed completely used to it. It was easy to imagine how exhausting the Room 4 Ghost Story had been for her over the years. Room 4 had produced so many deaths, of course the police paid attention — but Ma En's question was whether what these particular officers were paying attention to was simply Room 4's bloody history.

He was certain at least one of them had a connection to the Room 4 Ghost Story.

That said, he recognized that an ordinary person without his particular suspicions, without the habit of reading strangeness into daily life, probably wouldn't think this way. These officers' behavior wasn't beyond what was normal. The details that looked suspicious to him only looked suspicious through the lens of everything he already believed.

In the end, it was simply that the enemy's targeting had been too direct, the methods too unsubtle — and that made the whole event sound a wrong note, creaking like something that didn't quite fit.

The ordinary rhythms of daily life were developing cracks.

But that sound didn't make Ma En want to pull away from it — he'd expected his mood to darken further, and instead found the opposite. Something almost like finally back on track. As if the past self and the present self, which had been severed from each other, were being sewn back together by some invisible thread in this moment.

His chin rested in his hand. His thoughts drifted away from the voices in the corridor. He was very calm inside — his expression gradually softening, settling into something peaceful and unhurried. Listening to words that seemed to promise a coming storm, something long absent stirred in every cell of his body, and he found himself unconsciously running his thumb along his jaw.

Gradually, he allowed the faint smile with nothing behind it to surface.

The neighbor's breathing quickened slightly. He'd begun looking toward the young man reclining on the sofa more often now — those expressive eyes showing more and more uncertainty, and something that looked like unease. His attention had shifted away from the people outside. It was fixed on the smiling Ma En instead.

"We should probably question the residents here—" the young officer began, and the manager cut him off without ceremony.

"No. Absolutely not." In Ma En's memory, the manager had never sounded this formidable. "Question them? Question them about what?"

"Someone reported a—"

"Reported what?"

"The... the body..."

"Where is the body?"

"Enough! Shut your mouth! Rookie!" The veteran officer finally lost patience and barked the reprimand — then immediately softened his voice toward the manager: "My apologies. He's new, doesn't know the ropes yet. Young people — ambition, you know. I hope you'll understand."

"Ambition is a fine thing," the manager said with cold amusement. "But you should also know that keeping your feet on the ground is how things get done. If there's no body, don't come here trying to manufacture one."

"Yes, yes. We appreciate your patience." The officer's laugh had no warmth in it. He wasn't happy either.

A pause settled over the corridor. Perhaps because the officers were still lingering and not leaving, the manager asked flatly: "Who is your direct superior?"

"What?" The officer sounded genuinely confused, as if the question hadn't registered properly.

"..." The manager's voice was level and cold. "I'm nobody important — just a hired employee. But the owner of this building is acquainted with quite a few high-ranking officials. You're in the police. Surely you've heard of them."

"What are you implying?" The veteran officer's tone darkened.

"You're a Deputy Inspector, aren't you? Above you there's an Inspector, a Superintendent. But the owner of this building is acquainted with people at the ministerial level, and chats easily with the Superintendent General." The manager seemed to be counting something off, almost to herself. "Patrol Officer. Senior Patrol Officer. Sergeant. Deputy Inspector. Inspector. Superintendent. Senior Superintendent. Chief Superintendent. Superintendent Supervisor. Superintendent General. This building has had so many deaths, and yet nothing gets out except ghost stories. What do you make of that? Almost all the information has been suppressed internally, hasn't it?"

"What exactly are you saying?" The young officer couldn't hold back — his voice rising, as if some implication in the exchange had touched something sacred inside him that he couldn't stand to have touched.

"How many times do I have to say it — shut your mouth!" The veteran cut him down again.

"But! Deputy Inspector—"

"There is no 'but'!" The veteran paused, then turned to the manager: "We'll leave now. You'd do well to keep a close eye on your Room 4 tenant. We don't want anyone to come to harm. You all keep saying it won't happen again — and look how many times it has."

"Thank you for your time," the manager said, her tone softening slightly. "I still believe nothing will happen this year. This tenant is a good young man — look into him even briefly and you'll see. He works at the Academy of Peaceful Learning, under Katsura-sensei."

"We'll look into it." No more was said. The officer walked directly to the elevator. The manager followed quickly — no inclination to linger on the thirteenth floor a moment longer than necessary.

Not until the elevator doors closed and the sounds faded did Ma En open his eyes, look at the neighbor, and nod with a smile.

"Thank you, friend."

"A shame they didn't go into Room 5." The neighbor's voice had settled — low, slightly muffled.

"What's in Room 5?" Ma En asked.

"I don't know. I'm certain there's something — but I haven't found it." This surprised Ma En.

"You've never gone in?"

"No. I don't go barging into other people's rooms. I only observe everyone from my own." Something seemed to occur to him; his voice tightened slightly. "I have methods for staying out of the monsters' notice. But if I move too aggressively, it becomes dangerous. Who knows what's in Room 5? I might step inside and they'd detect me immediately. Even me — if Matsuzaemon personally locks onto me, there's nowhere left to go."

"So as long as Matsuzaemon himself doesn't act, you're not afraid of them? They can't surveil you the way they surveil me?" Ma En pressed for confirmation.

"...Generally speaking, that's right." The neighbor was quiet for a moment before admitting it.

"And Hirota Masami?" Ma En raised the person who'd occupied his thoughts most since arriving in Japan. "I seem to recall you were fairly hostile toward her."

"Her?" The neighbor seemed to be sneering — though even now, Ma En couldn't fully adjust to the room's darkness. Something felt wrong about the way the shadow and dim blurred the neighbor's outline, though the brightness of his eyes remained clear.

"She certainly knows about me. But she herself doesn't know this." A contradictory answer, strange enough to stop Ma En cold.

"I don't follow." Ma En spread his hands, genuinely at a loss. "You mean she doesn't know what she's doing herself? Is she being coerced?"

"No. Hirota Masami is a key figure." The neighbor seemed to be wrestling with how to explain it. "She's one of those monsters — but she's special. Her role in that group is different, unique. Her current situation is also somewhat different from the other monsters disguised as humans. Let me think. Let me think..."

Ma En said nothing and let him work through it.

"You know what dissociative identity disorder is?" the neighbor said finally, after several minutes.

Ma En nodded. The common term, at least, he recognized.

"The monster is her true dominant personality — but it stays buried deep inside her, in her subconscious. Hirota Masami is a skin stretched over the surface of the monster. Her personality is a fabricated personality, floating on top of the monster's. But Hirota Masami doesn't know this — just as someone with dissociative identity disorder doesn't know their other personalities exist, and believes the personality they're experiencing to be the primary one. That's what I mean."

"So it's just a personality problem?" Ma En asked.

"No! Absolutely not!" The neighbor's composure broke the instant Ma En said it. He fixed Ma En with a ferocious glare — the look of someone staring at a fool who refuses to understand no matter how many times it's explained. "She is a monster! From beginning to end, a monster! A monster wearing human skin! DID is just a description — an analogy. Do you know what an analogy is?"

"Right, right. I understand now." Ma En smiled quietly and said a few gentle things. The neighbor felt as though the voice had some quality he couldn't name — he couldn't remember what the young man had actually said, only the softness of the sound itself. Like the summer wind chimes he'd heard as a child at the house out in the countryside...

"Now then. Tell me about yourself, friend."

The neighbor snapped back to himself. He fixed Ma En with a wary look. "What exactly are you?"

"Hm?" Ma En tilted his head, holding the gaze without flinching.

"You... you're definitely not ordinary... not an ordinary person... no, no, could you be..." The neighbor's voice was becoming garbled again — rough, unclear, words falling apart at the edges. At the same time, Ma En heard the scraping, shifting sounds again, coming from all around the room.

He felt a clear, sharp hostility radiating from the neighbor — dangerous enough to raise the hair on his skin.

Crossed a line, did I? He's sensitive, this friend of mine.

The thought passed through him — and rather than tense up, he let himself sink deeper into the sofa, becoming even more visibly relaxed, his face going loose and open.

"Don't misread me — I'm just an ordinary person. It's only that so many strange things have been happening lately..." He let out a slightly helpless sigh. "You saw it yourself — I was completely cornered. If not for you, I'd be finished. Thank you. You really are my lifesaver."

"Hm-mm..." The neighbor's mood seemed to gradually ease.

"I only wanted us to get to know each other. We're friends now, after all — we're going to work together against the monsters. How can we do that without knowing anything about each other?" Ma En kept his tone gentle and sincere.

"...I will tell you things. But on my terms, not yours!" The neighbor's voice sharpened back into clarity. "Don't try to work things out of me. No one has ever extracted a secret from my mouth. I am the best detective. The best keeper of secrets. Do you understand?!"

"Ah, of course. I'm just a frog at the bottom of a well — my little scheme was seen through immediately." Ma En put on an embarrassed look and offered an apologetic laugh.

The neighbor stared at him without mercy. Ma En fell completely silent this time. Half a minute passed — and then the neighbor spoke again, as if he'd just remembered something: "Let's go. We'll deal with the body. They're all monsters. I told you I'd prove it."

Ma En's expression brightened — he sprang up from the sofa with barely concealed excitement.

"Really? I've been looking forward to it."

"Don't get too excited, young man." The neighbor shifted into a slightly more measured, pontificating tone. "You need to understand how dangerous these monsters truly are, and how dangerous your current situation truly is — the danger you've grasped so far doesn't amount to one ten-thousandth of the reality. I will show you something extraordinary. The most astonishing sight in this world. But even though this method will resolve the immediate problem, it will also make those monsters target you even harder. What you're about to see is a double-edged blade. You understand that?"

Before Ma En could answer, the neighbor answered for him: "No. You don't know. How could you possibly know? You crotch-brained idiot — all you think about is women, you fool!"