Ghostwire: Tokyo - KK's Investigation Notes

There was a report of seven employees working at a startup operating out of Shibuya all disappearing in a single night. Most of the public figured they just skipped town, but these are the kinds of cases that demand our attention.

I don't know the first thing about IT stuff, or business for that matter, so Rinko tagged along when I went to look into it. Rather let a pro take care of that stuff than try to fumble through it and make a fool out of myself.

Rinko's a researcher by trade, and Ed too. They and the guy we're trying to catch used to work together researching spirits and souls and whatnot. I don't understand the details, but they ended up discovering the existence of ether, and the fact that some folks—like me—have an "affinity" for it.

Anyway, the startup we were looking into dealt with research into artificial intelligence. They wanted to make an AI that could outdo a human.

As Rinko herself put it, researchers are trouble. Bunch of people that don't know how to keep their noses out of where it doesn't belong—just because they CAN do something doesn't mean they should. I kinda get the feeling that Rinko was pointing the finger at herself just as much as fellow researchers... and as well she should, since this whole mess started because of her group's work on the afterlife.

We investigated the company's office, and ended up finding the AI and switching it on. Sure enough, the thing talked like it had a mind of its own—but it was no AI at all! It was some kind of monster that dragged me INTO the PC.

It was weird as all hell, probably caused by corruption in the area. The monster was swinging a giant pair of scissors around and damn near succeeded in cutting my head right off! My luck held, though, and I managed to take it down. I gotta imagine the missing workers weren't so lucky, though. Probably all killed.

Rinko was dead silent the whole ride back. I think the situation hit kind of close to home for her. I tried to tell her what I thought she needed to hear: screwing up doesn't mean you're a bad person—as long as you regret your mistakes.

Generally, when we finish up a job, we pass copies of my notes on to the clients who hired us. Those notes have apparently been circulating around a bit, and now it sounds like rumors about our little group are starting to get around.

I doubt anyone takes them all that seriously, though. The kind of weird stuff we investigate isn't the sort of thing someone just reads about randomly and believes. Or, at least, that's what I would've hoped.

Take this "Cult of the Flying Cloth" thing. It's about—wait for it—a flying piece of cloth that scales buildings and flies around in the sky.

Some weirdoes managed to catch it, and now, naturally, they're worshipping the damn thing. I don't get how people's minds work these days. It's not some mystical piece of fabric, it's a yokai, an ittan-momen!

Trust me when I tell you, if you come across one of those things, you don't want to kneel down and start singing songs to it or whatever, you want to GET AWAY. Nothing good comes from finding an ittan-momen.

Had to look into some social media something-or-other recently. Apparently there were a bunch of posts that'd always go up at a set time of night involving a bunch of students dancing.

I've asked Erika a couple times before to explain the whole social networking thing to me, but it's all way over my head. Anyway, the kids in these posts were showing up online WITHOUT ANY HEADS. Knew that shit was bad for society, and there's your proof.

Ed and Rinko analyzed the pics and figured out that all the kids were from a school in Shibuya. I went to take a look around, and sure enough, I found a bunch of those things. Visitors wearing student uniforms and dancing around like kids. Turns out they weren't the cause of it all—it was actually some specter with an axe to grind about the whole "being dead" thing.

The second the specter caught sight of me, the dancing Visitors were on my ass. One or two I could've handled no problem, but this was a whole bunch of them, all spitting and screaming and throwing rulers and shit at me. Huge hassle.

Once I dealt with them, I went after the specter. When I cornered it, I realized it was spouting a bunch of social media nonsense, stuff about "no followers" and not having any "mentions" or "DMs."

Erika had been listening in, and she told me to try following the spirit's account. She walked me through the process, and it ended up working! After I followed it, the spirit calmed down and let me exorcise it.

No idea why a spirit would care about fake internet fame when it was already dead. Maybe all those abandoned accounts are kind of like lingering spirits themselves.

Ed was conducting some experiments into "spirit transmission" with some machine he'd built, but apparently every time he ran it, the ether he used was just disappearing outright—which he says is NOT supposed to happen.

He was doing the experiments with the phone booth network, which meant it was possible the problem was in the phone lines or the power grid, so we decided to look into it. The lines were all fine, but the problem kept on happening, so we started to believe that there was someone or something out there just stealing the ether he was sending out.

Ultimately this was all just for Ed's experiments, so I figured it wasn't that big of a deal. But Ed insisted. He said that in the worst case scenario, we might end up having to actually use the machine to get souls out of Tokyo to save them, and if there was something out there devouring ether sent through it, that wouldn't bode well for any souls we sent later.

In the end, we decided to set a trap for whatever we were dealing with. We started periodically sending some ether to the same location over and over. Lucky for us, the damn thing took the bait. Less lucky was that, when we found it, the thing was goddamned gigantic. When we showed up and I first saw the thing looking down at me from the power lines, I thought I was dead.

Somehow, though, I managed to take it out, despite earning a couple good bruises for my trouble. Ed tested the machine again and found that it was working perfectly, so everything ended up working out. I just hope we can put a stop to that freak's plans before we ever have to use that thing for real.

A report came in about a giant teru teru bozu floating in the sky. Rinko tried digging some stuff up on on social media, but she pretty much just found people posting bullshit or "trolling," whatever the hell that means.

Turns out one source had good info though: some kids passing on what they knew out of honest-to-god curiosity. They'd been stacking up a mountain of evidence and info about the situation, but nobody else would give them the time of day.

They kept at it, though, and finally they found us to listen. Leave it to kids to keep on believing in something when everyone else is shouting you down. That kind of persistence puts most adults to shame.

The kids had apparently heard about someone named "KK" in the course of their research, and were hoping I'd be the one on the case. Rinko decided that we'd better not let them down, so she dumped the whole thing on me.

Anyway, according to the kids' info, whenever the giant teru teru bozu showed up, the next day was guaranteed to have clear, sunny skies. Dale and I set up shop on the roof of a building and watched the skies for days on end, but we came up with a whole lot of goose egg.

Maybe it was out of boredom, but that's when I had the idea to cover Dale up in a cloth and let HIM play the teru teru bozu. He's a big guy, so I figured it'd work out—and if it didn't, it'd at least be pretty funny.

Never got a chance to try it, though, because right when I brought it up, the giant teru teru bozu appeared. Unforunately, it was just a Visitor; certainly nothing that was gonna part the clouds and clear the skies or whatever.

We put the thing out of its misery, but I dropped the ball and forgot to snap a photo of it. All that time spent waiting, and we were gonna end up without any proof to show the kids for our trouble.

Couldn't let that happen, so I ended up putting old Dale to work after all. I hated pulling a fast one on the kids, but hey, I had to reward their hard work somehow.

We had a long string of rainy, foggy days. Everybody was sick of it. All of our plans were running further and further behind.

And in the middle of all that, we started hearing rumors about snow falling. It wasn't remotely the right time of year for that, but apparently the snow was hitting one place after another, and every time it did, there'd be reports of sudden deaths happening in the vicinity.

We thought the guy we've been hunting might have something to do with it, so we decided to sniff around. In the course of our investigation, Rinko figured out a way to trace the route that the snowfall was taking. She's got a sharp mind for that kind of stuff, you can always count on her for it.

Anyway, we took advantage of that and I staked out the next spot the snow was projected to fall. Next thing I knew, I was facing a horde of raging monsters led by one wearing a shiromuku, one of those bridal kimonos.

I tried fighting the big one, but that turned out to not be one of my better ideas. The thing hit me back hard, and for a minute I was sure I was a goner—a hit like that would've killed someone without the affinity for sure. Silver lining: I knew the culprit behind all the deaths now.

I decided to make a break for it for the time being. Rinko explaind that what I had run into was a procession of yokai called a Hyakki Yako. You grow up hearing fairy tales about that kind of thing, sure, but seeing one for real? Sign of the times, I guess. Makes me sick to think the world's come to all this madness.

Still, even though I didn't manage to take the things out, we at least gained some useful intel from the whole ordeal. Rinko figured out that the Hyakki Yako seems to appear primarily within a certain area, with Tokyo Tower at its center.

That guy is just enough of an ass to pick a place like that for this kind of thing. The sooner we put him down, the better.

It's been slow going, but bit by bit, the powers I got from that son of a bitch have started to stabilize. I'm still not used to the damn visions, though. So much for life as a normal human being, I guess. Like it or not, my body's just as monstrous as his is now, so I've just gotta learn to live with it.

Rinko and Ed actually told me to make the most of it—damn scientists always have a screw or three loose. Still, they did save my ass and all, so I need to at least play along a little.

Anyway, I got sent to investigate what remained of the old Jukai Soba. Late-night, that area has a kind of mystic power, a way of attracting all kinds of characters—and I don't just mean hungry guys like me looking for some grub, I mean actual monsters. That's why they closed the place down. It attracted customers, sure, but sometimes not the kind you'd want.

So, I was checking out the site and I found this weird glimmering light. Too hazy to tell what it was at first. I thought it was another vision, but once I focused in, I could tell it was something vaguely person-shaped moving around. It didn't say a word, though. It just pointed at the ground.

I dug up the ground where it was pointing, and found bones... human bones. They looked years old, decades even. I had a contact look into it, but they couldn't find anything. They thought the bones could've dated all the way back to the war, back when Shibuya was burned to the ground by firebombs.

Given the hustle and bustle of the place these days, I can't imagine the dead could rest in peace. Wouldn't surprise me in the least to find that their anger boiled over from time to time.

A couple reports came in of kappa sightings at a local pond, so we headed out to take a look. Ed was especially keen to go for his research on yokai.

Supposedly, the magatama that can be extracted from yokai might be capable of bringing out a person's latent affinity—but to test that, we obviously needed a yokai and its magatama.

Lucky for us, the reports were right, and we found a kappa at the pond.

Unlucky for us, we failed to capture it because we forgot to bring a cucumber, of all things. That's kappa-hunting 101. Maybe next time, I guess.

A fortune-teller called out to me while I was roaming the streets. He tried to lure me in with some hokum about seeing good fortune in my future, money coming my way, crap like that. The guy was clearly just fishing for a sucker to drain the cash out of.

In any case, I had pretty good reason to doubt he could see anything: he had a bound spirit floating right behind him, and he didn't have a damn clue.

The spirit started spilling his life story to me, telling me how he fell into ruin after constantly borrowing money from crooked loan sharks (like there are any sharks on the up and up). Tragic, if nothing unusual by itself.

No, the part that caught my attention was that several employees who worked at the money lender all died at the same time on company property, out of the blue. They all died with looks of sheer terror on their faces, like they'd seen something they shouldn't have.

I decided to check out the building where it all happened. Inside the ruined remains of the office was the boss of the whole enterprise, dressed to the nines and looking damn well pleased with himself.

Surprise of the day, turns out he was a monster in disguise. A damn nasty one at that, too—he had a big mallet thing he was swinging around.

If that thing had been an Uchide no Kozuchi like in the old fairytale, then maybe that fortune-teller would've been right, and I'd be swimming in money right now. But nope, it was just a plain old mallet, and all I got for my trouble was some bruises.

Reports about that fog kept creeping in. Even so, every time we would show up somewhere, it would already be gone, leaving nothing but some dreary rain in its place.

Today was no different. Rinko's monitoring device picked something up, but when we got there, all we found were the clothes of a mother and her son. Left behind, like two molted cicada shells.

It's hard to even imagine. A parent and her child, just gone. Precious lives, snuffed out forever. My heart sank knowing that I failed to protect them. It was the worst feeling I'd ever felt.

As if on cue, the rain started pouring down. Heavier and heavier it fell with each passing minute, but I couldn't be bothered to take out my umbrella.

Suddenly, a group of monsters appeared in front of me, brandishing their own umbrellas. I don't know what came over me at that moment. I was so furious that I flung myself at them. They tried to protect themselves with the umbrellas, but I just kept pounding on them until they were battered and broken.

I was so exhausted I could've fallen over at any moment, but pure wrath kept me going. As I made to leave, I still refused to open up my own umbrella. I just walked away, the pouring rain soaking me to the bone.

Normally, a ramen shop attracting a line of hungry folks night after night is nothing to write home about. People like a nice hot bowl ramen after work, no mystery there.

Now, if you had a ramen shop with a line full of monsters, that'd be something, though—and that's exactly what we've been hearing rumors about. Some famous joint that had shut down apparently had big old lines of monsters forming for it, so we decided to pay a visit to the site and see what was up.

Dale was keen on going himself, but I'm pretty sure he was just in it for the ramen. Ed came along, too, but he just played a recording of himself giving a big lecture on the history of ramen the whole way there. Weird company aside, three guys heading out for a quick bowl of ramen sure does take me back to my younger days.

We got to the place and found, sure enough, a big line outside packed with beefy-looking monsters. They were all just standing around, though, not going inside, so we spooked them a little and got them to disperse.

When we got inside, the place was thick with the scent of pork belly and... I dunno, humanity? It was like you could almost feel emotions wafting through the air. Turns out the owner had turned into some kind of malevolent specter—but he was still just cooking up a storm.

I asked what the deal was, and he told us that he'd helped his protégé set up his own shop, only for the punk to go and open it right in the same neighborhood and start siphoning off his customer base. The restaurant biz is cutthroat, I tell you.

The owner told us if we ordered a bowl of ramen and ate it, he'd let us purge him. I wasn't a fan of the idea. We barely know what's in normal restaurant food, right? But I took one for the team and went along with it.

It was a... Let's call it a unique experience. Learned a lot about food from the underworld from that meal. Ed better appreciate what I did there, though, I'll tell you that.

On the way back, we stopped to have some actual ramen, and Dale was all over it. Ed refused to touch his until it was ice cold, said something about carbs being better for your body when they're cold. Probably should've introduced him to tsukemen, that would've done the trick. Oh well.

I got a tip on a missing woman from Marunouchi.

When you've been a detective as long as I have, you tend to build up a big network of contacts. The story my contact told me was that they saw the woman one day when the fog rolled in. It blanketed the area, and then poof, she was gone.

Times like these make me wish a certain somebody was around. Come to think of it, the fog and these disappearances set the scene for when I first met Rinko and the rest of the crew.

Everybody kept talking about folks just up and disappearing, and I thought it was a load of horse shit. Wasn't 'til I met Rinko, Ed, and Dale... and until I touched an ether crystal myself, that I believed. Ever since then, I've been haunted by what I would've once called hallucinations.

Turns out being able to see spirits and monsters isn't fantasy-movie nonsense after all. Guess I should be thankful, because otherwise I wouldn't have seen through that monster taking the form of the woman.

She made a bunch of red orbs appear that chased me around, but I knew that, so long as I didn't let myself get surrounded, I'd be okay. She was a walking nightmare, so I put her out of her misery.

When I searched the scene, I spotted a woman's handbag. Found the missing lady's ID cards in there. Then I came across some clothes that looked like they would've been hers. They were in a little pile, but the way they had fallen made it clear her body had just vanished.

No mistaking whose handiwork it was, either. I'd finally managed to get my hands on a solid enough lead to work with.

We got a report about people hearing meows coming from a cat no one could actually find. I'll admit, I figured it was just a stray yowling the way cats do and said we should ignore it. But Erika managed to convince Rinko it was worth looking into, so off we went.

The cries had been coming from an abandoned building in the redevelopment zone. I definitely HEARD a cat meowing, but couldn't find an actual cat.

Wasn't long, though, before Erika uncovered the root of the whole mystery. Turns out there was a nurikabe that had been blocking the way into the room where the cat was stuck, so we freed the little guy and it all worked out. Maybe we're all cut out for animal control after all.

I have to say, I was impressed. Erika not only convinced the group to look into the business with the cat, she even managed to solve the whole thing herself. It's clear she's getting stronger and more resilient by the day.

If you ask me, one of these days in the not-too-distant future, she'll be the one saving our asses. And hey, with her there, I didn't have to actually go near the stupid cat, which is all the reason I need to celebrate.

I came across a gaggle of stray cats loafing around outside a convenience store the other day, but something was off about one of them. When I looked closer, I realized it wasn't just a cat—it was a yokai! A nekomata, to be exact.

The old yokai tales say that if a normal cat lives long enough, they eventually become a nekomata. There's actually all kinds of stories like that, with objects and animals turning into yokai if they manage to stick around long enough.

I asked Ed about it and he said that the process might have something to do with the accumulation of ether. Considering my ether affinity gives me the ability to steal power from yokai, I think he might be on to something.

Side note: I'm pretty sure Ed likes yokai more than he does other humans.

You don't get baseball games in Shibuya without a horde of uniformed fans running through the streets. We found out, though, that some of these fans had disappeared, leaving nothing but said uniforms behind, so it fell on me to investigate.

Didn't take me long to find out that the ones who'd vanished had all purchased their tickets through less-than-legitimate means. They'd go to the spot to pick up their tickets, then poof! Gone.

With that figured out, the first order of business was to grab some tickets ourselves using the same back-alley channel. Specifically, there was a social media account that only shows up every night at 2AM sharp offering the goods. We told them we wanted tickets, and they told us to come out to a local underpass.

At this point, I was thinking this might have nothing to do with fog or Visitors or the supernatural. I showed up at the destination, and the place was dimly lit and didn't seem to have anyone around.

Right on cue, though, a guy in a baseball cap showed up, and I knew right away that he wasn't human. It went about how way you'd expect—he said he wouldn't take money for the tickets, but that I'd pay with my life. He started coming for me, but I made it clear that I wasn't buying his shit, if you catch my drift.

After all that was sorted, we did some more digging. Found out that there was a case a few years back involving a scalper who was beaten to death at that very spot by an irate customer. I guess all the resentment he had over the incident turned him into a specter.

Real sad story. If you ask me, baseball, money, anything like that... None of it's worth dying over, not by a long shot.

A report came in about people in Shibuya disappearing near a manhole. The whole thing smelled wrong, but Rinko was all too happy to "delegate" the task to me.

I thought it could all just be some stupid prank, but I still went to meet up with the person who got in touch with us. Turns out it was a little kid named Ryota. Perfect. Lucky me, getting to be some kid's gofer on top of being Rinko's errand boy.

Anyway, the kid told me about how someone named Sosuke disappeared near a manhole and asked me to go looking for him. At this point, I was thinking Sosuke was the kid's little brother or something. I mean, why wouldn't I?

I found the manhole, and near it a spirit claiming it had been killed by some kind of monster. Supposedly, they'd been standing right on top of the manhole when it happened.

Intrepid guy that I am, I climbed on down. I'd only ever been down into the sewers one other time, back in my days on the force, and it was just as shitty this time as it was back then.

So, once I got down, I ran into this kid in a yellow raincoat just hanging out there! Not the first place I'd think to find a lost kid, but I figured it could be Sosuke, so I called out to him. Which turned out to be a real bright idea, because it was actually the monster.

The thing saw me, blew a whistle, and then a bunch more of them showed up to ruin my day. Thankfully I took the things down, but next time I'll just go ahead and take care of them BEFORE getting noticed, instead of running my mouth.

Surprise of surprises, in the end, Sosuke actually DID show up—and he was a damn dog! My heart just about stopped when I first spotted him. Thanks, kid. I guess I'm a pet detective now, too.

I was on Sports Avenue in Shibuya the other day, and there were all these barkers going up to just about every young person in the area, trying to draw in some customers to their shops.

None of them came near me, though. Probably because they could tell I'm a detective and wouldn't put up with their bullshit.

But then one of them DID approach me... and it was a rokurokubi. Now, in my mind, when a lady comes up to you asking for something, you can't just ignore them if you know what's good for you. That goes double when you're talking about a rokurokubi.

Anyway, I tried to chase the thing down, and it gave me the runaround all over the alleys of Shibuya before I managed to corner it. Got myself a magatama for the trouble, though, which I passed off to Ed and Rinko.

Seems like the redevelopment work in Shibuya isn't just affecting people, but yokai too. Tengu, for example—you'd normally never see something like that in the city, but lately we've had a bunch of them.

They're not hurting anybody, so I've been leaving them alone, but I can't help but wonder if it's all a sign of something to come. In any case, seemed like something worth writing down.

We got some intel about frequent accidents in Shibuya's redevelopment area. There's always construction going on night or day there—normally, anyway.

This time, I couldn't find anybody, working or no. Apparently it was because everything was on pause while they investigated the cause of all the accidents.

If we were talking ordinary workplace mishaps or something like that, it'd be rooted out and solved in no time, but getting to the bottom of this case turned out to be a lot trickier. It took a guy like me, who can see what people aren't normally supposed to see, to have any hope of finding the truth.

So, I was searching through a building under development, and this gang of monster creeps dropped in near the top, followed by some tengu in pursuit, looking ready to get rowdy. I'm guessing they were in some kind of turf war.

The tengu eventually noticed me and started squawking at me to help them out. I told them I would, they hoisted me all the way up, and then I took down the monsters for them like they wanted, like we were some kind of floating attack platform.

The baddies were nothing to write home about except the last one that pulled a suicide run on me. If I hadn't been so quick to protect myself, I'd have been in some deep shit.

Once the monsters were gone, the tengu took off—and without so much as a thank-you. Far as I'm concerned, nobody ought to give their labor for free, so I'm hoping one day they'll repay the favor. We'll see.

I caught wind of a story about a school student running along a highway. Although probably better to say he wasn't running along the highway so much as tailing cars and motorcycles, trying to get them to crash and burn.

Definitely smelled like a Visitor situation to me. I filled Ed in and he was thrilled. He said it was similar to another urban legend about a so-called "turbo grandma."

Of course, by "said" I mean he had made a recording that he played back for me when I brought it up. No god damn clue when he did it or how the hell he knew to do it, but whatever.

Anyway, we knew that figuring out anything about this "turbo student" would mean hitting the same speed as him, which had Rinko on board. She got Ed and Dale to put together a souped-up motorcycle for the task.

This hog had a beast of an engine on it, and some kind of energy-emitting device that could keep monsters from getting too close to boot. The theory was that it would help avoid her ending up a smear on the pavement, with any luck.

Rinko ended up driving while I took the back seat. Sure enough, we were speeding along the highway in the dead of night when the "turbo student" showed up, running like a bat outta hell. Whatever it was, it approached us fast, but I was able to take it down—though not without our bike getting trashed.

Neither of us got hurt, but I guess putting such a powerful engine on the bike was too much for it. Rinko and Ed still want to fix it up, and even upgrade it so it can safely ride through fog, too.

For those two, shit like that is hardly work at all, more like play time. They look like kids in a candy store when they're tinkering.