Tokyo: The Player Behind the Scenes.

Chapter 36: Unraveling the Mystery (4k)

"That's it, Master, Master, look, is there any hope for me?"

Hosokawa finished speaking in one breath, his mouth dry but unwilling to drink water, and immediately asked Kurosaki Chimi expectantly.

Kurosaki Chimei stared at the phone that had finished converting speech to text, his brows furrowed, and he stroked his short beard, making Hosokawa almost stop breathing.

"Thank goodness." Kurosaki plucked a beard hair and stared at Hosokawa. "That demon was powerful, but it was confined to that school building. Think about it, after leaving that school building, you haven't encountered any danger. What you've encountered is basically just an illusion."

Hosokawa thought about it carefully, then nodded vigorously and hurriedly, faster than a pile driver.

"The reason you still have hallucinations is that the evil spirit of the demon has attached itself to your own evil thoughts, which is why you still have hallucinations, like a lingering ghost, disturbing your mind."

Kurosaki's words were full of confidence.

"Then, what should I do, Master?!" Hosokawa seemed to understand, yet also seemed not to understand, and quickly asked.

"Easy to handle."

Kurosaki rummaged around for a moment, took out a talisman, folded it, and flicked it. It instantly burst into flames. He then threw it into the glass of water he had just been drinking and pointed at it, saying, "Drink it."

Hosokawa didn't ask why, picked up the water glass, closed his eyes, tilted his head back and gulped it down, then nervously continued to watch Kurosaki.

Kurosaki nodded in satisfaction: "This talisman can protect you from this calamity for now, but what about the days to come?"

"What will the days be like after that?!"

"From now on, you need to do good deeds and accumulate virtue, and stop doing bad things. In this way, the evil thoughts in your body will naturally dissipate, and the meager curse left by the demon will have no effect on you."

Kurosaki's confidence infected Hosokawa, who suddenly felt that the sky outside the window had brightened up—even though it was actually a rainy day.

“You’re quite lucky, unlike the other three.” Kurosaki shook his head knowingly, making Hosokawa cherish this chance to live even more.

That's right, out of the seven people, I'm the kindest. Every time I extort money from my friends, I leave them some for the subway ride home, even though I know they actually have monthly passes.

Perhaps it was this small act of kindness that saved my life.

Hosokawa thought to himself.

He secretly vowed to be a good person from now on, and that anyone who dared to accept "friendship fees" again would be damned! They'd better step over my dead body first! And he'd have to work to pay back the money he'd taken before.
While Hosokawa was lost in self-criticism and reflection, the two had already left the ward.

Returning to the smoking area, Kurosaki carefully took off the blue robe, folded it neatly, put it back, gently stroked the Three Pure Ones Bell, and silently recited "May the Heavenly Venerable grant me boundless blessings" three times before putting it away.

Heisei Ryu now truly believes that Kurosaki is a genius who excels in only one area.

In some respects, he could be considered a talent for criminal investigation.

"There's a lot of information here, let's organize our thoughts first."

Kurosaki waved his hand, then ignored Heimori Ryu, found a seat, took out his phone, and looked at the details that Hosokawa had just recounted.

Hei Shing-ryu, of course, wouldn't sit idly by. He called back to the police station and got Matsuo, the one who was injured and bleeding in the library and thus withdrew from the activities that night, in order to conduct a second questioning on the contents of the statement.

Half an hour later.

"Any progress?"

Outside the ward, Kurosaki Chimei, who was deep in thought with an old notebook, looked up at the sound and saw Heisei Ryu handing her a can of coffee.

He took it, opened it casually, and drank half a can in one gulp.

"Are you a detective or am I? I'm just a support player. Have you ever played a MOBA game?" Kurosaki complained.

"I paid." Ping Shenglong's calm words contained the supreme power of capitalism, leaving Kurosaki unable to refute them, even though the amount given was not actually much.

"There's a bit of that. His experience that night was quite eventful. First of all, judging from his description, Teacher Jiao Tan harbored great, unexplained malice towards them, the students. But why would he hate the students so much? What was the reason? That's the first question."

"Secondly, since Teacher Jiao Tan hates them so much, their escape is completely illogical! One of them jumped off the building. According to the information you provided, he dragged his injured leg and couldn't climb out of the old teaching building. He kept circling around in the open space at the entrance and shouted for a long time before anyone heard him. This shows that he was definitely still under Teacher Jiao Tan's control."

"The other one fell down the stairs and was knocked unconscious. According to the information you provided earlier, he was no different from the other dead, but he wasn't attacked either. Both of these could be explained by the fact that Teacher Jiaotan got bored seeing that they were powerless to struggle, so he attacked the people who could still move first. Wouldn't that make sense?"

Ping Shenglong suddenly interrupted, "Is it possible that the intense pain can break free from manipulation, and that the unconscious people cannot be used by Teacher Jiaotan to commit suicide, since those three victims all died by their own hands?"

Kurosaki glanced at Taira no Ryu with some surprise: "Not bad, you've already developed a sense of the supernatural so quickly."

"..." Ping Shenglong didn't know what "strange tale thinking" meant, but he wasn't interested in asking further. He just waited for the explanation.

"If excruciating pain can break the control, then wouldn't it hurt to twist your head back little by little? Wouldn't it hurt to strangle yourself to death? If he broke the control, he would most likely break the illusion as well, so why would he be circling around like that? Is he just doing it for fun? You can say that there's some truth to it, but not much." Kurosaki shook his head and continued.

"It's also inappropriate for an unconscious person to be out of control. Before strangling oneself, one must first lose consciousness, and then continue to exert force while unconscious to ensure death. Therefore, the claim that Teacher Jiaotan cannot kill an unconscious person is untenable."

Ping Shenglong did not deny it, and nodded to signal him to continue.

"Besides the two injured, there are two survivors who are unconscious. Both of them fainted due to emotional distress. The difference is that one of them only felt someone chasing him before he fainted from fright. Hosokawa, on the other hand, fainted from fright after he saw Shokutan-sensei find him."

"Before he fainted from fright, he saw another student in the library, and that student, according to you, was the one who hanged himself through the half-meter-high classroom window."

"Pay attention, here comes the third key point. I'm asking you, why did that student in the same library as Hosokawa suddenly scream and try to run out despite knowing there was something terrifying outside?"

Kurosaki's lips curled into a smile of excitement, as if he had just grasped a corner of the truth, as he stared intently into Heisei Ryu's eyes.

Heisei Ryu nodded slightly. He had the same question when he heard Hosokawa's description in the hospital room.

"There's something even more terrifying in the room!" the two said in unison.

"Haha, actually it's not necessarily something even more terrifying. According to Hosokawa, that Koizumi, right? He was the only student who hadn't encountered Mr. Kozumi yet, so he didn't know how terrifying he was. It's reasonable that he accidentally bumped into something scary and ran away."

Kurosaki finished the remaining half bottle of coffee in one gulp, then threw the empty can into the trash can in a perfect parabola.

"But...did you notice the details? Hosokawa also said that when he entered the room, Koizumi was holding a prop arm and was very calm. So at least it shows that he is not a coward, and he wouldn't be so easily frightened that he would lose his mind. So what he saw must have met the definition of being extremely terrifying."

"Is it possible that a pre-arranged scare device was triggered?" As a detective, Heisei Ryu couldn't jump to conclusions so easily. "That's possible," Kurosaki nodded. "Because of Hosokawa's sudden intrusion and his talk of ghosts and spirits, he suddenly became sensitive and took the scare props seriously. But the noises coming from outside the door were real, so to scare him, it couldn't be those motionless, inanimate objects, right? Are there any scare props that fit that description?"

Ping Shenglong quickly searched his brain but found almost nothing. It might be a startle box, but that could be determined by the footprints! He could find out by the footprints.

He took out his phone and sent a message to his assistant.

【Received, give me five minutes.】

"Anyway, I don't think it's the fault of those scary props. Next, the main event—Koizumi's screams stopped abruptly, and Hosokawa hid in the shadows, trembling. A few minutes later, Mr. Kozumi suddenly appeared in front of him, and it was at this moment that he fainted."

"So, let's simulate the scene and reorganize the timeline."

"The student named Sato mysteriously disappeared behind Hosokawa and Inoue, who were the first to enter the teaching building, so Sato was most likely the first to die."

"Later, Hosokawa and Inoue tried to escape, but Inoue died in the process. I don't know which group he was in, but let's say he was in the second group, because at this time, the students who were supposed to jump off the building had not yet jumped."

"Taking the student who jumped off the building as the starting point, the student who was chased and fell down the stairs and lost consciousness, who also did not hear the sound of falling, will also be temporarily placed in the second batch."

"Immediately after that, Hosokawa and Koizumi heard the sound of falling from the building, so the students who fell were the third group."

"Koizumi was in the fourth batch."

"Hosokawa is in the fifth batch. You don't have any objections to this classification, do you?"

Kurosaki flipped to a blank page in his notebook, drew a straight line on it, and then divided the page into timelines based on the students' injuries or deaths. He then bit the pen cap.

"Hmm." Heisei Ryu nodded. Although Mr. Jiao Tan could obviously create illusions, he didn't seem to need to hide the sound of jumping off a building.

Everyone else jumped off the building, so to him, it was probably just another meal on his plate, since he couldn't escape the old teaching building area anyway.

“Now, you are Hosokawa who has fainted, and I am Mr. Kotan.”

"You fainted from fright because Teacher Jiao Tan suddenly appeared in front of you. Now I have two choices. Since everyone who is still alive is either injured or hurt, I can't play with you anymore. Either I kill you, or I go find someone else, like that injured student."

"But as you know, the student with the broken leg's screams finally reached the outside world, and patrolling guards came running over with flashlights."

"It's like, it's like everything was suddenly interrupted by something, abruptly stopped, but at that time, it wasn't even the time of day when the yin energy was at its peak. So do you think it's possible that the being that Koizumi encountered, the one that scared him so much that he ran out of the library, wasn't actually evil, but instead stopped or even eliminated Mr. Kozumi when he was about to attack Hosokawa!"

Kurosaki excitedly shared his conjecture, his eyes sparkling with a thirst for knowledge.

"I never imagined our old school building would become so terrible after it was abandoned. If I had known, I would have gotten a teaching certificate back then and gone back to teach at my alma mater."

He felt no fear whatsoever at this terrible thing; on the contrary, he trembled with excitement.

After carefully considering Kurosaki's speculation, Ping Shenglong could not deny that most of it was self-consistent.

“Now, let me tell you about my findings,” Heisei Ryu began.

Kurosaki regained his serious expression and closed the pen cap: "Go on."

“I told you yesterday that a student named Matsuo got his arm cut because he was startled by Sato in the library.”

"Yes, I remember. It was probably his blood that awakened the long-dormant Mr. Kotan." Kurosaki flipped to a page in his notebook, on which were written the words "Matsuo's blood awakens Kotan."

"Don't you care what scared him?"

"By what?"

"Do you still have the notebook with you that contains different versions of Teacher Jiao Tan's story?"

"Yes." Kurosaki took out a similarly tattered notebook from a tattered cloth bag that looked like a magic bag.

Heisei Ryu turned to a certain page and handed it back to Kurosaki: "It was this story that scared me."

Kurosaki took it and stared at it blankly, as if frozen in place.

Ping Shenglong didn't urge him, but sat down beside him and drank his oolong tea.

"I understand!!"

Kurosaki slapped his thigh in anger and roared, drawing the attention of people in the distance along the corridor.

Several people in the ward poked their heads out.

Seeing this, Heisei Ryu quickly pulled the muttering Kurosaki to a secluded corner.

"No wonder this charcoal teacher's actions were so similar to the most fake version; no wonder there haven't been any murders for so many years, so that's why."

Kurosaki started pacing around on his own, talking to himself and chewing on his pen cap.

"Therefore, there are three possibilities for this so-called 'Coke Teacher'. First, he is just using the identity of 'Coke Teacher' in the ghost stories. Second, he mistakenly believes that he is 'Coke Teacher'. Third, he is indeed 'Coke Teacher', but he has amnesia and relies entirely on Sato's stories to fit himself into this setting."

"But no matter which conclusion you draw, it doesn't explain the naked hatred this charcoal-smoking teacher harbors towards his students."

"Hosokawa said that at the beginning, he heard what sounded like a child urging them to hurry up and hurry up. Let's assume that this is the student who went missing with the teacher, and he doesn't seem to have any intention of harming anyone. Doesn't this show that even beings like them don't necessarily have to harm people?"

"So, why did Teacher Jiao Tan hate his students so much? Was it related to his death? Could his hatred for his students extend to when he was still alive?"

"Do you remember me talking about how eccentric and withdrawn that missing teacher was before he died?"

"I have a clue now, but I still need to go to the school to take a look in person."

After listening to his analysis, Ping Shenglong nodded slowly.

"it is good."

(End of this chapter)