Recap / Ghost Trick

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Our protagonist wakes up within a junkyard, and finds himself witnessing a confrontation between a redheaded young woman and a blue-skinned man in a dark suit. The man aims a gold-plated shotgun at the woman, prompting the other guy to want to intervene…but as far as he can tell, he’s a blonde man in a red suit who’s currently keeled over between the other two. As he contemplates this however, a voice tells him that he’s got no business lolling around dead right now, and that he’s the only one who can save the woman.

The man in red gives a start at this, before finding himself in a frozen, red tinted version of the junkyard. The voice tells him that this is the Ghost World - the realm of the dead - and directs him to look at his corpse. The man in red sees a blue flame there - his soul, according to the voice - as well as a bright white spot within a nearby railway crossing gate. The voice explains that these are “cores”, and the souls of the dead can jump between them within the Ghost World, and manipulate the attached objects outside of it - the titular “ghost tricks”. By using both the gate and a guitar, the man in red is able to briefly distract the assassin, but he ends up stuck within his corpse, which he is unable to move. With no nearby objects close enough to jump to, he can only watch helplessly as the man in black guns down the woman.

With the woman dead, the man in black heads down towards a ringing telephone on a lower level of the junkyard - kicking the man in red’s corpse down there along the way - and tells the person on the other end of the line that he’s done his job. The hired killer then departs, and the man in red silently laments being unable to save the woman despite his abilities, before a nearby lamp turns to look at him. The lamp reveals itself to be another dead spirit - with the man in red identifying it as the source of the voice he heard earlier - and reveals that there’s more to learn about the powers of the dead, but before he’s willing to give the details away, they need to save the woman.

The lamp tells the man in red to come over and possess him, and the man in red does so; he doesn’t like to see dead women lying around like trash, and he doesn’t have anything left to lose at this point. As he travels over, the man in red notices a strange aura emanating from his corpse, which the lamp claims is a mark of those whose spirits possess powers of the dead. Possessing the woman’s corpse, the man in red finds her soul unconscious just like his was; the lamp suggests they leave her be for now, and explains that by possessing the corpses of those who have been dead for less than a day, it’s possible to go back in time to four minutes before the person’s death. The man in red doesn’t understand, but nevertheless decides to try it.

Four minutes before her death, the woman is kneeling next to the body of the man in red, before she’s confronted by the man in black, who identifies himself as a hitman named “Nearsighted Jeego”. The distractions previously initiated by the man in red go off, before Jeego manages to put a shotgun shell in the woman’s back, as he did the last time we saw this scene. With things having played out as they did in the present, the lamp then reveals that one can not only watch the past play out, but change it. The man in red thus returns to the past again, and after making his way up to the same level of the junkyard as Jeego and the woman - he starts off at the corpse’s resting place in the present - he provides a distraction with a bicycle bell before dropping a wrecking ball from a nearby crane onto Jeego, killing the hitman and saving the woman.

With the woman saved, the man in red and the lamp return to the present - or rather, the new present caused by their averting the woman’s fate - to find the woman kneeling within the rain. Observing that this woman is a stranger to him, the man in red comes to the horrifying realization that he can’t remember a thing. Not his identity, and certainly not why he was killed. The lamp - who introduces himself as “Ray” - isn’t too surprised, explaining that such a thing sometimes happens to the dead. He then warns the man that once the next dawn comes, his soul will pass on and cease to exist.

Unnerved, the man asks if his own death can be reversed the same way the woman’s was, but Ray replies that spirits can’t use their powers on their own corpses, otherwise he’d have saved himself by now. Faced with the knowledge of his (second) impending demise, the man nevertheless resolves to find out who he was and why he died in the time he has left. Ray approves of the decision, and advises him to start by investigating the woman; after all, since she witnessed his death, she might have some clues related to his questions. The lamp goes on to state that the woman is the key to everything tonight, but doesn’t elaborate any further.

Possessing an umbrella, the man uses it to move closer to the woman, who uses the umbrella for shelter from the rain as she heads down to the lower level of the junkyard. There she finds both the man’s corpse, as well as a black cat which prowls around near the body before heading off. The woman then spots a note within a pocket of the man’s jacket and takes it out to read it, but before the man can get a good look, both of them hear the nearby telephone start ringing. Reminding the man that Jeego took a call from the same telephone in the original timeline, Ray claims that the caller is the same person who ordered him dead, and has him possess the phone. Doing so, the man in red finds himself listening in on a phone call between the woman and a short, blue-skinned and ostensibly dressed man with prominent eyebrows, with the latter quickly hanging up once he realizes he’s not speaking to Jeego.

Ray informs the man in red that the dead can travel across phone lines to any phone they’ve previously listened in on, meaning he can pay a visit to the man with the eyebrows. Unfortunately though, Ray won’t be joining him for that; he claims his powers have waned, and it took everything he had just to get here. He tells the man in red that many mysterious things will happen tonight, and asks that he find out the truth behind them, adding that they’re tied to the man’s missing memory. With that in mind, the man in red heads across the phone line, and towards the man who wanted him dead.

The man in red finds himself within a luxurious parlor, with both the man with the bushy eyebrows and a much larger masked henchman in similar attire. Upon a screen mounted on a wall is an image of the woman - whose name is revealed to be Lynne - and the bushy-browed man can be seen reading a file on her. The man in red tries to get a look at the file himself - startling the bushy-browed man in the process - but finds it’s been written in a language he’s unable to read.

The man in red’s subsequent attempts to move through the room irritate the bushy-browed man, and he has the large henchman turn off the image of Lynne. In its place, the screen displays the man in red, whom the bushy-browed man refers to as Sissel, thus giving our protagonist his name. As he and the large henchman discuss a “deal” due to take place tonight, Sissel notes that the pair seem to know him, and he appears to have some connection to Lynne. Sissel then operates a control console within the room to bring back the phone he traveled through - again startling the bushy-browed man - and the phone rings, with the large henchman revealing that he sent another hitman to Lynne’s apartment. As Sissel eavesdrops on the conversation, the hitman - “One Step Ahead” Tengo - explains that he’s currently waiting for Lynne to return.

Not wanting to lose his only lead on the rest of his identity, Sissel heads over to the apartment through the phone. Arriving within the apartment, Sissel spots Tengo, as well as a tied-up girl and a dead Pomeranian. Not wanting Lynne to come home to such a situation, he heads over to speak with the dog, with the animal’s spirit quickly waking up in response to him. The dog’s memory also returns swiftly; he introduces himself as Missile, and states that the girl is his owner, Kamila. He and Sissel then go back in time to save both him and Kamila, tricking them into hiding beneath the apartment’s couch just before Tengo arrives. They also take note of a woman in the neighboring apartment, who bangs on the dividing wall in response to Missile’s barking.

With Kamila and the Missile of the past safe for the moment, Sissel gives Missile an explanation about ghost tricks before returning to the present, finding Kamila and Missile still hidden away. Tengo leaves after getting a call about Lynne still being at the junkyard; after he’s gone, Kamila takes another call, this one from Lynne. Wanting to listen in on the conversation, Sissel prepares to head over, but notices that Missile has a core despite being alive now. Possessing the core, Sissel finds himself once again speaking with Missile, who remembers his freshly reversed death and time as a spirit. Taking note of this information, Sissel heads over to the phone, and hears Lynne instruct Kamila - who’s a little sister of sorts to her - to get out of the apartment and head to a restaurant named the Chicken Kitchen, and also to bring a music box with her.

Before she can say any more though, a lab coat-wearing man with a pet pigeon approaches her from behind; this causes her to yelp into the receiver, and subsequently leads to a startled Kamila dropping her phone into a fish tank, shorting it out. With little else to do, Sissel helps Kamila locate the music box, while noting that he doesn’t know what such a thing is. Kamila then heads off, but with the phone no longer working, Sissel is seemingly trapped within the apartment…

After overhearing a ringing telephone from within the neighboring apartment, Sissel realizes he has a way out, and incites Missile to bark loudly, causing the next door neighbor to knock down a painting with her banging and create a path for him. As he leaves, Missile asks if he’s going to save Lynne and Kamilla; Sissel admits that he has his own mystery to solve, but he’ll do what he can for them if it helps him. Leaving Missile resolving to create his own path - and repeatedly jumping at the apartment door - Sissel travels onwards.

The next door apartment is high-class, heavy with the smell of perfume, and home to a tense atmosphere. At present, it’s occupied by both the woman - a romance writer by trade - and her daughter, a feverish and currently bedridden little girl. As Sissel travels across the place, the girl convinces her mother to let her skip out on a lesson she was due to attend tonight, before bringing up her father. She accuses her mother of taking her away from him when he took issue with her writing, but the woman insists they not talk about him. The phone rings just as Sissel reaches it; possessing the phone, he hears a conversation between the woman and her husband, an important-looking and deeply troubled official of some sort. The man pleads with his wife to return home with their daughter - Amelie - but the woman refuses, and makes clear that she doesn’t want to hear from him again that night.

Sissel then uses the phone lines to return to the junkyard, where he finds a pair of detectives and a medical examiner looking over his body. He also reunites with Ray, who informs him that his death is being investigated as a murder, and brings the lamp up to speed on everything that’s happened since the two of them parted ways. Ray informs him afterwards that Lynne was arrested earlier; wanting to find out more, Sissel listens to the conversation between the detectives and the examiner. The detectives indicate that suspicion is on Lynne - a rookie detective within the police - in regards to the crime, and mention that she was unofficially looking into a big case. She also has ties to Inspector Cabanela, the head of the police’s Special Investigation Unit.

The inspector himself - a flamboyant man in a spotless white coat - chooses that moment to show up, before (literally) dancing down the stairs to meet with the other three men. The phone starts ringing after he’s checked in; picking it up, the inspector finds himself taking a call from a park within the town, with Sissel eavesdropping on the conversation. The person on the other end is initially an eccentric man who claims to be the guardian of the park, before a man in a cap manhandles him off the phone and takes over the call. This man is evidently involved with the police, as Cabanela instructs him to carry on with a stakeout and inform him of anything that happens.

After hanging up, Cabanela heads off to question Lynne, who’s currently being held within the junkyard superintendent's office. The detectives talk about how Lynne’s supposedly his favorite, before the medical examiner identifies the murder weapon as a pistol that’s standard issue for detectives, further incriminating Lynne. Shortly afterwards, a gunshot rings out from nearby, and Cabanela makes a call from the super’s office to ask the medical examiner to come up and join him, before getting angry when one of the detectives claims the man in question is busy. The medical examiner is sent up, and Sissel decides to head to the office himself via the phone lines, the gunshot making him anticipate another death…

Entering the super’s office, Sissel finds a now distraught Cabanela cradling a (once again) freshly deceased Lynne. The same old man who came across Lynne earlier - the junkyard superintendent - offers his help, but Cabanela dismisses him, and he and his pigeon head down into the office basement. The medical examiner then shows up, but he’s predictably unable to do anything, and Sissel decides to see what he can do.

Possessing Lynne, Sissel finds her spirit conscious this time around, but like him, she too remembers nothing of her past or her identity. He helps her out there as best he can, then decides to discuss a few things with her, namely what she knows about him and the matter of her death. Upon learning that he was supposedly killed while meeting with her, Lynne claims she doesn’t know him, but she does remember him asking her to meet with him earlier, not that either of them know why. As for her death, Sissel fills her in on how he saved her life earlier and what he knows about ghost tricks, with Lynne managing to recall the events of her previous death.

With everything said and done, Sissel asks Lynne if she’d be willing to look into him and his death should she come back to life, but Lynne reluctantly tells him that from what she can recall, she was investigating a matter of her own before she was killed, meaning she might not have time to spare on him. Though disheartened, Sissel nevertheless decides to try and save her, taking her honesty about her intentions as a sign that he can trust her.

Heading back in time, Sissel and Lynne spot the Lynne of the past looking at a notebook whilst holding the phone receiver, before a uniformed cop comes into the room, prompting her to hide the notebook. Cabanela enters the room and dismisses the cop a bit later, before assuring Lynne that he doesn’t suspect her of anything. Lynne then asks about something supposedly due to take place tonight, but Cabanela claims to not know about any such thing, moments before Lynne gets shot from outside the office.

Despite a complication arising when Sissel discovers he can only move between phones in use in the past, he manages to make it out into the junkyard by alerting the cop to the location of Lynne’s notebook; having caught a glimpse of Lynne reading it while holding the phone when he came in, the cop calls one of the detectives to inform him about it, giving Sissel his way out. Back in the junkyard, Sissel kills Tengo - the shooter - by forcing him to hide beneath a load of crates hanging from the crane, and then squashing him with said crates.

Her fate averted once again, Lynne questions why she never got ghost tricks following her death, but Sissel replies that she’s lucky; after all, unlike him she can be brought back if she dies. He then returns to the present, and decides to go and check on Lynne.

Returning to the super’s office, Sissel finds that Lynne is nowhere to be seen, with one of the detectives berating the cop for letting her escape. He uses a nearby lamp to direct the cop in the room back towards Lynne's notebook; one of the detectives notices it as well, and after remembering that the report mentioned Lynne was looking at it while using the phone, he decides to call a circled number within. Eavesdropping on the call, Sissel finds the detective speaking to a uniformed man named Officer Bailey, who states that Lynne has been calling the number every night, and suggests she's doing so out of an instinct that something's about to happen. The detective doesn't press on what this thing is, and hangs up before leaving to file the report.

Heading over the phone lines to where Bailey was taking the call from, Sissel finds himself in another office, this one occupied by both Bailey and a co-worker in the same uniform. Investigating the room, Sissel overhears a conversation about a “Prisoner C78” arranging to use the “telephone room” around the same time Lynne usually calls the place, with Bailey noting that they can't let Lynne talk to “him” tonight. Lynne calls shortly afterwards to request just that, to which Bailey apologetically turns her down; he claims the telephone room's reserved, but hesitates a little before saying so. He then brings up the call he got from the detective earlier about her, but Lynne replies that it's no big deal before hanging up.

Sissel travels to the phone Lynne called from, and finds himself in the basement of the super's office, with Lynne dead once again (and surprisingly jovial about it). Going back in time, Sissel discovers that Lynne was killed when she turned on the lights and activated a “murder machine” within the room, with the machine's last steps being to lift up a Cupid statue, then have it turn around and set off a wall mounted matchlock pistol aimed at Lynne with a flaming arrow. Sissel uses his ghost tricks to make the Cupid statue turn back around and shoot its arrow in the opposite direction, which causes it to set off a collection of party poppers instead of the gun, saving Lynne once again; following this, the string used to lift up the Cupid statue spontaneously combusts into nothingness. The detective wonders about the purpose of the room, and admits she finds something about it familiar, before Sissel leaves to return to the present.

After being rejoined by Sissel in the present day, Lynne decides to share some information with him, having regained her memory now that she's alive. She admits that she's been looking into an old murder case; she believes the official culprit of it is innocent, and there's more to the thing that meets the eye. She's not willing to tell him anything about the case though, but she otherwise agrees to answer whatever questions of his she can.

Sissel brings up the earlier incident at Lynne's apartment, as well as his encounter with the men behind the assassination attempts on her. Despite the clear danger to her life however - and the fact that Sissel's saved it three times now - Lynne insists she can't work with him. Sissel asks if she remembers the identity of his killer now, but Lynne replies that her memory's still not clear on that part. She does remember meeting him and then seeing him fall down though, and suggests the culprit could have shot him from far away. Sissel points out that Lynne's police colleagues seem to suspect her of being the killer, but she denies it; Sissel had offered her to provide her with information she wanted, meaning there was no reason for her to kill him before she got it. When asked about this information, Lynne claims it was related to the case she was working on, at least according to the Sissel of the past. Sissel then asks if the thing happening later is also related to her case, but Lynne refuses to answer.

With the conversation finished, Lynne prepares to leave and meet up with Kamila before the police find her again. Sissel notes that Lynne’s still his best lead in regards to his identity, and argues that the two of them can still make use of each other for their respective goals, even if Lynne doesn’t entirely want to cooperate with him. Lynne accepts this idea, but before doing so, she asks Sissel to infiltrate a prison - the place she was calling earlier - and find out the work schedule for a prisoner known as “D99”, explaining that it’ll be written on a small blackboard within its cell. Sissel agrees to do so, and Lynne departs through a trapdoor within the basement before escaping the junkyard, Ray bouncing around happily as he watches her go.

Sissel returns to the prison office to find Bailey and his colleague - evidently a pair of prison guards - discussing the preparations for something taking place in two hours. Knocking down a pair of memos pinned up by Bailey gets the guards talking about two other prisoners in the facility; rock musician C38 and curry lover C74. Both prisoners have committed crimes requiring knowledge that - logically speaking - neither of them should’ve had; C38 blurting out damning national secrets during a concert, and C74 singlehandedly storming a police commissioner’s office with a flamethrower and demanding curry. If either of the two have spoken about how exactly they got the information necessary for their crimes, it hasn’t been revealed, with both incidents considered matters of national secrecy.

The next prisoner to be discussed is D99. Listening to the conversation, Sissel learns that the man allegedly shot his wife, but neither of the guards can imagine why he’d do such a thing. Bailey mentions that this case is a matter of national secrecy as well, and that the prison they’re in was built specifically to handle such cases, leaving his colleague unnerved. C38 is brought into the neighboring phone room to make his call shortly afterwards, and Sissel jumps into his guitar while he’s there, allowing him to get a ride to the cell block where D99 resides.

Within C38’s cell, he discovers a slight hitch in Lynne’s plan in that - for whatever reason - he can’t actually read, but he decides to keep looking for D99 regardless, not wanting to go back to Lynne empty-handed. Taking advantage of a conspiracy between the other two prisoners to dig an escape tunnel - C74 digging, C38 informing him about the presence of guards via notes sent through the prison's plumbing - he travels down to D99’s cell in the lower level of the block, where he discovers the prisoner to be a large, bearded man wearing a pink coat and working on a painting. Heading over to the cell’s blackboard, he notices it has nothing written on it, and decides to report this to Lynne.

Before he can leave the cell though, a guard approaches the prisoner with a chicken for his dinner; while there, the guard asks D99 why he committed his crime, but the prisoner claims there’s no point asking such a thing, as by now he and everyone else have forgotten about the case. The guard then asks about the painting D99’s working on, referring to him by his actual name of Detective Jowd; the prisoner replies that he paints faces he doesn’t want to forget about, before moving the painting to the side so he can eat. When he moves away, the painting is revealed to be a picture of Sissel.

After struggling to take in this shocking sight, Sissel decides to head back to Lynne posthaste. Passing through the office on the way though, he listens in on a phone conversation between Bailey and the chief of police concerning the preparations for whatever’s happening later on, by now due to take place in an hour. The chief then puts Cabanela on the line; the Inspector asks Bailey about Lynne’s previous call to the prison, before instructing the guard to tell him if she calls again, reminding the man that she’s a fugitive. Cabanela then hangs up, and Bailey mentions that Jowd and the inspector were once old friends.

Curious about events within the chief’s office, Sissel decides to head there before meeting Lynne, and listens to the chief and Cabanela discussing plans to catch an individual at “Point X”. The two senior lawmen then move on to the matter of Lynne; apparently some very decisive evidence against her was discovered on a tape found and sent to them by the Special Investigation Unit. Sissel puts the tape on, and sees himself and Lynne speaking within the junkyard. Their words aren’t shown, but whatever Sissel says comes as a surprise to the detective, judging by her reaction. Then Sissel leans back against a fence, and Lynne draws her gun with a shaking hand before firing off two shots at him. The first goes wide, but the second shot hits him, and he collapses.

As the tape comes to an end - and Sissel concludes that Lynne was the one who killed him - the chief notices that Sissel’s body was found on the lower level of the junkyard despite him being killed on the level above. In answer, Cabanela points out the next part of the tape; a few minutes after Sissel was shot, a black cat emerged from a bag he had been carrying, knocking his body down to the lower level. Then all of a sudden, both men get a call about Lynne being seen at Point X. Panicking, Cabanela orders the person on the other end to get Lynne away from the place, before he and the chief hear a loud crash, followed by silence.

Cabanela calls Point X to see what’s going on; when Sissel possesses the phone, he finds the call being received from the Chicken Kitchen of all places, with the chef there indicating that things have gone to hell. Hanging up, Cabanela tells the chief that he’s going to head off, but not to the Chicken Kitchen; there’s a matter elsewhere he has to see out. The chief claims that Cabanela’s presence there won’t change things, but the inspector insists.

As for Sissel, he does decide to head to the Chicken Kitchen, wanting to know why Jowd’s schedule for tomorrow was blank, and why Lynne shot him. As he heads through the phone lines, he wonders just what it is Lynne’s gotten herself into now…

Arriving at the Chicken Kitchen, Sissel discovers a crashed minivan, a gigantic roast chicken sculpture on the floor, and the chef kneeling by the side of an unconscious waitress. Looking around the bizarre scene, he finds Lynne lying beneath the gigantic chicken, dead once again, and links up with her.

As they talk, Sissel brings up how he saw Lynne shoot him on the tape. The detective denies it, but Sissel points out that by her own admission her memory’s foggy on the matter, so she can hardly be certain she didn’t commit the crime. Lynne reminds him that she had been planning to get information about her case from him, but Sissel replies that he saw himself reveal something shocking to her on the tape, and argues that she could have shot him after getting her information. Lynne however doesn’t remember being told anything back then, and Sissel’s naturally in no position to fill in the blanks now.

Upon hearing about Jowd’s blank schedule, Lynne becomes distraught, explaining that such a thing means the prisoner in question is due to be executed. She and Sissel discuss Jowd’s crime, Sissel recalling that the detective was said to have murdered his wife, but Lynne denies that he would ever do such a thing. She also adds that the death penalty has never been enforced in the country for a long time; Jowd specifically requested to be executed. All this means to Lynne is that there’s more to Jowd’s case than meets the eye, and Sissel figures that Jowd’s connected to him as well, if the man’s painting is anything to go by.

Sissel also brings up how the police were staking out the restaurant, and asks Lynne why she came to the place. Lynne explains that the note she took from his corpse indicated he had planned to meet someone there at 10PM; having no other leads, she decided to check the place out herself. Sissel notes that this would mean the police were waiting for him.

Having been brought up to date on everything, Lynne comments that Sissel now knows who shot him, and that he could take his revenge by refusing to save her. Sissel however declines; he may know how he died, but he still doesn’t know why it happened, nor does he know who he was or who the pair in the parlor are. To find all that out, he’s going to need Lynne’s help, with the detective agreeing to provide it.

Going back in time, Sissel and Lynne find the Lynne of the past waiting to meet with Sissel’s contact, but the only other people in the restaurant at this hour are a waitress, a bartender and a blue-skinned couple dressed similarly to the hitmen Sissel dealt with earlier. As Lynne waits for a chicken she ordered, she looks up at the giant chicken sculpture - suspended from the ceiling here - before noticing the minivan about to crash into the restaurant. Lynne saves the waitress from being hit by it, but this puts her right beneath the chicken sculpture after the crash causes its chains to snap.

Looking for a way to stop the disaster, Sissel and Lynne head over to the blue-skinned couple - a short man named Dandy and a tall woman named Beauty - and take notice of a large red trunk they have with them. Listening in on the couple’s conversation, the two spirits learn that they’re aware of the incidents caused by the residents of the special prison despite the whole “national secret” thing. Before they can hear any more though, Beauty senses that someone’s eavesdropping, and she and Dandy move to another table. Sissel and Lynne follow them, but Beauty once again detects that something’s up, and discovers a bug upon her and Dandy’s chicken. She incinerates it with a lighter, and moments later the events of the crash start to play out.

Unable to find a way of averting Lynne’s death within the restaurant, Sissel and Lynne use the chicken sculpture to reach the body of the minivan driver, and Sissel proposes they use him to go back further in time. Doing so, they discover him to be a detective, and the man who had been staking out the restaurant from the park earlier. He’s also the man who had reported Lynne’s presence there to Cabanela and the chief; while driving to extract her as per the inspector’s orders, he overhears part of the conversation between Beauty and Dandy via the bug, before Beauty’s destruction of it causes it to emit a signal loud enough to knock him out, leading to the crash. Lynne therefore proposes they stop this from happening.

As Sissel and Lynne head back to the start of the four minutes, Lynne admits that she used to play in the park as a kid, until a past incident made her swear to never return to it. Sissel decides not to delve into the matter for the moment, opting instead to focus on saving their current victim. Noting that the detective took a call from a nearby payphone before radioing Cabanela and the chief, Sissel learns through the phone that he had been in contact with the Chicken Kitchen waitress - in reality an undercover cop - and that she had been the one to bug Beauty and Dandy’s chicken. Using the phone line to travel to the restaurant’s kitchen, Sissel uses his ghost tricks to stop her from doing so, thereby preventing the detective’s crash and the string of events leading up to Lynne’s death.

Despite being saved from death once again, Lynne’s upset about apparently shooting Sissel, but the man’s willing to give her reason for doing so the benefit of the doubt. He does however suggest that she tell him about her case, and Lynne agrees to do so once they’re back in the present.

Returning to the Chicken Kitchen of the present day, Sissel finds Lynne scarfing down a chicken, with the detective - whose last name is Rindge - sitting down at the table with her. Heading over to join them, Sissel notices that Rindge doesn’t have a core despite his earlier death, with him and Lynne later deducing this was because he never regained consciousness after Sissel possessed his corpse. Rindge advises Lynne to leave while she can, since there’s an APB out on her, but Lynne insists on remaining, with Sissel remembering that she was due to meet Kamila at the restaurant. As Rindge asks Lynne not to do anything crazy regarding Jowd’s case, Sissel links up with her, and the two get down to talking.

Sissel asks about Jowd, and Lynne admits that the reason she’s so invested in his case is because he’s her personal hero. Ten years ago, she was taken hostage by a gunman when she was out playing in the park, with Jowd showing up to save her. She doesn’t remember much of the details after that though, except only that there was a loud bang which caused her to pass out, and that when she came to, Jowd was kneeling in front of her and assuring her she was safe. Jowd’s actions on that day inspired Lynne to become a detective herself, and Sissel comments on the irony that said inspiring detective is now thought to have murdered his wife.

In regards to Point X, Lynne explains that according to Rindge - another member of the Special Investigation Unit - a deal with the potential to affect the nation’s future is due to be concluded within the restaurant, with Beauty and Dandy being one of the involved parties. Sissel asks if he’s the other party, but Lynne replies that Cabanela’s the only one with any real knowledge about the deal, adding that he’s been observing Beauty and Dandy for a while now. Sissel brings up Cabanela, pointing out that he apparently considers Lynne his favorite among the police, and Lynne explains that he and Jowd were friends during their time as detectives. After Jowd’s supposed murder of his wife though, Cabanela distanced himself from investigative work and put all his focus into getting higher up within the police ranks. He still found time to mentor and support Lynne throughout her own career though, and Sissel guesses that he was looking out for the girl his friend had saved ten years ago.

In regards to Kamila, Lynne starts to get concerned over her continued absence. Sissel brings up that they’re like sisters, and Lynne agrees, stressing her desire to keep both Kamila and the music box safe. Sissel recalls the music box he helped Kamila retrieve from the apartment, and Lynne explains that Jowd had it sent to her and Kamila following his arrest, with instructions for Lynne to give it to someone once his case was resolved. Sissel asks what’s inside, but Lynne replies that she hasn’t been able to open it and find out.

Becoming distraught, Lynne asks if she really did shoot Sissel, admitting that she still can’t remember, and that she can understand what he’s going through in regards to his own lost memory now. Sissel remarks that ignorance might be bliss in some cases, but Lynne states she’d rather believe there’s hope.

Back in the real world, Lynne finishes off her chicken, and Rindge reluctantly informs her of Jowd’s impending execution. Lynne replies that executions are traditionally carried out at dawn, thereby giving her time, but Rindge reveals that Jowd’s execution is due to happen at 11PM, not long from now. He adds that only a stay of execution from the justice minister himself can stop it; Lynne promptly races off to his office, while instructing Sissel to return to the prison and prevent the execution from there…

Returning to the prison, Sissel finds the place in the middle of a power blackout, and Bailey in an…enthusiastic state of panic. His colleague indicates that the facility’s generator and internal phone lines are down, and that Jowd is also dead, before the two guards get a call from the death chamber of the prison, the guard on the other end informing them that the prison’s internal phones are back up. Sissel uses the phone line to head down into the death chamber himself, finding it and the neighboring generator room to be right beneath the cell block, with C74’s tunnel reaching to just above the generator room (the man himself is lying fast asleep within it).

Sissel finds that he can see through darkness to a limited degree within the Ghost World, but that’s not enough for him to tell what just happened. He proceeds to assist a guard in getting the prison’s generator running again, restoring light to the facility and allowing him to have a look around within the death chamber. There he sees signs of a recent explosion centered around the room’s electric chair; a conversation between two guards currently trying to fix it indicates that the chair hadn’t been used for a while, and was subsequently left to gather dust and fall into disrepair. In any event though, Jowd is dead, his body lying at rest within a neighboring mortuary.

Jowd is quick to wake up following his possession, and surprisingly nonchalant about not having his memories, dismissing them all as “trash”. Sissel bringing up Lynne causes him to remember her, his past and his execution - though he still can’t recall who Sissel is - and the man in red decides to head back into the past and undo Jowd’s death. After confirming that Lynne told Sissel about his crime, Jowd asks if it’s really a good idea to save the life of someone like him. Sissel replies that he doesn’t know, but Lynne believes it is, to which Jowd is silent.

Watching the events of the last four minutes play out, Sissel learns that - in a dose of irony - Jowd was killed when a test of the chair caused it to short circuit and blow up while he was waiting in front of it. Jowd is largely apathetic in regards to stopping his death, only pointing out that if Sissel stops the chair from exploding, he’ll simply be executed properly. In the end though, Sissel manages to travel to the lower level of the cell block via a note sent to C74, where he tricks Jowd’s past self into unwittingly sending another note to the curry lover that prompts him to resume digging, allowing Sissel to reach the generator room of the past. From there, he’s able to pull the lever for the chair, blowing it up before Jowd can be brought anywhere near it. And in a happy coincidence, the subsequent power blackout causes the cell doors to open automatically, granting Jowd an opportunity to escape from prison.

Before Sissel departs the past, Jowd - who rather enjoyed the whole experience - advises him to head for the spoon afterwards. As he returns to the present day, Sissel notes that the detective’s still in danger of being executed; he’s going to have to help the man escape from prison…

Back in the present, Sissel finds the prison still in the midst of the blackout he caused, and in a state of emergency owing to the open cell doors. He follows Jowd’s advice and heads for the spoon being used by C74; moments later, the curry lover gets an alert about a note and returns to his cell, inadvertently taking Sissel to the cell block with him. Soon after his return though, a guard with an assault rifle, body armor and night vision goggles detains him; as Sissel returns to Jowd’s cell, he spots a guard with similar attire patrolling the area.

Finding Jowd hidden away within his cell, Sissel learns that he was the one who sent the note to C74; having seen how his ghost tricks worked while Sissel was preventing his death, he realized that Sissel would need another way to return to the cell block after the internal phones went down. Sissel remarks to himself about Jowd’s smarts, before the pair discuss escape strategy, Jowd going along largely for the fun of it.

Jowd points out that if he’s going to escape, it’ll have to be done before the generator gets fixed and the lights come back on. And with it being dark and all, he’s going to need Sissel to serve as a guide; after all, while the guards aren’t used to situations like this - Jowd being the only inmate considered “dangerous” within the prison - they’re more than capable of spotting and shooting him thanks to their night vision goggles. He and Sissel do have one advantage though; possibly because he was previously dead, Jowd can now sense Sissel’s powers, and the two quickly work out a signal for the spirit to use when he wants Jowd to move somewhere. Using this, alongside safe spots and floor hatches within the cell block, Sissel is able to sneak Jowd past the patrolling guards just as the facility’s power comes back on.

With neither of them having a plan on where Jowd should go if he makes it this far, Sissel suggests he try and get in contact with Lynne, telling the detective how she went to see the justice minister. Jowd’s amused at the suggestion that an escaped death-row convict should pay a visit to the justice minister, but he decides to run in any event, not wanting to let Sissel’s efforts go to waste. As the former detective leaves, Sissel wonders if he truly did the right thing, before recalling the painting of himself in Jowd’s cell, and guessing that he’ll be speaking to the man again sometime tonight.

Sissel returns to the prison office, whereupon he finds the place receiving a call from Jowd, who instructs the spirit to head over and join him. Sissel travels through the line and finds himself in the prison courtyard, where he sees Jowd being held at gunpoint by Cabanela; turns out the inspector had come to the prison to witness the execution of his old friend. Cabanela expresses regret at finding Jowd and subsequently having to turn him in, to which Jowd comments on his need to protect his spotless record. Sissel senses there’s something deep between the two men, before linking up with the detective, who guesses he wants answers to his questions as thanks for the whole escape adventure.

Pointing out the picture of himself that Jowd was painting, Sissel reasons the detective must know him from somewhere. Jowd replies that he can’t talk about that, claiming he doesn’t know Sissel’s “true face”, but he does provide a lead for him; the music box he gave to Lynne long ago contains something that might jog Sissel's memory. If he manages to open it, it could be of help.

In regards to Cabanela, Jowd reiterates what Lynne said about his desire to reach the top of his profession, noting the inspector’s white coat as a symbol of that determination. He explains that for a man looking to become head of something like the Special Investigation Unit, a single bad mark within his record - a blot or stain, as it were - could be the end of those dreams, what with all the rival potential candidates out there. Thus, he argues, Cabanela will do anything to avoid being stained, even if that means allowing an old friend to be executed. Not that Jowd resents him for it though; he’s a condemned criminal after all.

The last thing Sissel wants to talk about is Jowd’s execution, questioning whether it’s truly the right thing to do. Jowd replies that his trial was a fair one, and his execution will finally allow his case to be put to rest. Sissel points out that Lynne is currently running around trying to prove Jowd’s innocence; does the detective really want to pass on with her knowing he never did anything to contest his fate? To which Jowd replies that the way he sees it, he’s not just being punished for killing Alma - his wife - but also for taking someone’s life ten years ago. He asks if Lynne told Sissel about how the detective saved her life; when Sissel confirms it, Jowd states that back then, he had been fully prepared to shoot the gunman despite the risk to Lynne, and the gunman ultimately died because of him, a fact that was never revealed to the then preteen Lynne. As far as he’s concerned, he doesn’t deserve to be considered a hero.

With the conversation in the Ghost World over, Jowd is ready to be taken away, but he convinces Cabanela to let him make one last phone call first. Reminding Sissel that Lynne had gone to see the justice minister, he dials up the man’s office, which turns out to be the same place the novelist was called from earlier. Lynne picks up and nervously claims that everything’s fine on the other end; guessing that she’s in some kind of trouble, Jowd asks Sissel to go help her out, and turns back towards Cabanela. The inspector gives him a pocket watch as a gift before leading him away; as he departs, Jowd advises Sissel not to trust other people’s memories, but instead to look for what he sees with his own eyes.

With there being no other cores in the courtyard he can use to follow Jowd and Cabanela, Sissel has little option but to head to the justice minister’s office and meet up with Lynne…

Arriving in the justice minister’s office, Sissel finds the man himself dead, with Lynne crouching next to him. He tells the detective about his adventure at the prison, but neglects to inform her of the other death Jowd claims responsibility for. Lynne gets distraught at the thought of Cabanela arresting Jowd, before she and Sissel turn their attention to the justice minister, the detective explaining that she found him dead when she arrived. Naturally, the pair decide to save him.

Going back in time, Sissel and Lynne learn that the minister died after suffering a fatal heart attack, largely brought on by stress over both a phone call he received, as well as a fruitless attempt of his to dial someone else. Investigating the phone call, Sissel discovers the minister was contacted by Beauty, who claims to have kidnapped Amelie in order to motivate him into ensuring Jowd’s execution, before warning that her people are watching him in case he’s thinking of blabbing to anyone. He then proceeds to save the minister by ensuring he can reach a jug of water and a jar of medicine pills - both of which he’d knocked away in his death throes - ignoring the minister's spirit making demeaning remarks about his past self all the while.

With the minister saved, Sissel returns to the present to find him arguing with Lynne over Jowd’s impending execution. The minister understandably still wants it carried out, though he naturally doesn’t mention the whole “kidnapped daughter” thing. Curiously, he also freaks out at the thought of Lynne so much as approaching him. As he continues to deny Lynne’s request, the detective asks why he even signed the warrant for Jowd’s execution in the first place, considering that he’d opposed it at the time; the minister, after a bit of hesitation, replies that he was simply doing his job, no more than that.

Deciding to intervene before Lynne does something she'll regret, Sissel manages to signal her, and informs her about Amelie when she approaches. She’s shocked by the news, but still not willing to stop protesting against Jowd's execution, and Sissel - who ended up stuck away from the minister while saving the man’s life - asks her to bring her over so he can talk to the guy himself. When he tries to do so though, the minister - after freaking out at the voice coming from an unseen source - insists there’s no such thing as ghosts and refuses to engage with him.

Sissel figures that in any event, he should try and do something about Amelie, and thereby take away his motivation to enforce Jowd’s execution. Taking the phone line to where Beauty made her call from, Sissel fears he’s moving away from his own mystery, but he’s still not willing to abandon a girl in danger.

Sissel finds himself within a room of a dilapidated residence, with Beauty sitting at a desk. Dandy then enters the room with his big red trunk, having slipped past the police around the Chicken Kitchen, and dialogue between him and Beauty indicates their hostage is in the trunk. Beauty then departs the room to get some fresh air, leaving Dandy to handle guard duty, with the man immediately falling asleep after she leaves. Sissel takes it as confirmation that the minister's daughter really has been kidnapped, and at the same time, he can't help but find something about the room eerily familiar.

After fiddling around with the objects within the room, Sissel manages to access the trunk, and opens it to find none other than Kamila inside. Beauty then returns, and Kamila asks about what's going on, before recognising the room as being in her old house, much to Dandy’s surprise. Disturbed, he asks Beauty why they brought the kidnapped Kamila here of all places, but Beauty replies only that the other party in their deal chose the location, adding also that the place has been abandoned for five years. She then orders Dandy to get some refreshments for her; after he leaves, Sissel returns to the Ghost World, whereupon he discovers much to his shock that Kamila now possesses a core as well, meaning she must have died and been saved by a spirit in the time since she left her apartment.

Sissel decides to talk to Kamila, inadvertently revealing the whole Ghost World thing to her. Unfortunately, the girl has barely any idea of what happened in regards to her previous death, and Sissel decides to not press the subject further. Asking her about the kidnapping, Sissel learns that Kamila was grabbed while heading through Temsik Park - the same park Lynne’s wary of - and that she hid the music box there just beforehand. He also asks Kamila about herself, but when the subject of her father is brought up, Kamila reveals that she’s not a daughter of the minister. Instead, she says, her father’s a man who’s about to die thanks to her. A detective due to be executed tonight, to be specific. With that, Sissel realizes that Kamila is Jowd and Alma’s daughter.

After getting over his shock, Sissel asks Kamila what happened five years ago. Kamila explains that it happened on Alma’s birthday; while her parents had been out working, she made a contraption to surprise Alma when she came home, with Sissel recognizing the device in question as the exact same one he and Lynne found in the basement of the super’s office earlier in the night (hence why he found the room familiar). Much like what initially happened to Lynne, the contraption shot Kamila’s mother with an antique pistol, a step very much NOT intended by Kamila. Jowd came home shortly afterwards; upon discovering his wife seemingly dead at their daughter’s hands and the string gone, he told her to never speak of the matter to anyone, and then consigned himself to death row, telling his daughter that what she thought happened was no more than a bad dream.

As Sissel struggles to comprehend the tragedy he’s just blundered into, an understandably distraught Kamila demands to know why she was kidnapped. Not wanting to admit the kidnappers’ intentions of forcing her father’s execution, but also unable to hide anything from Kamila within the Ghost World, Sissel suggests they work on getting her free before he says anymore. Right as he returns to the real world though, Dandy reenters the room after failing to find Beauty’s refreshments; most places don’t remain open after midnight, after all. Beauty then abruptly declares that they’re leaving the house, claiming it to be dangerous; after a bit of complaining, Dandy accedes…

…and then Beauty speaks out loud, seemingly addressing Sissel. She claims to be able to sense a spirit’s presence, and warns that Kamila will be killed if she does so again, before she and Dandy leave with the girl. Left alone in the apartment, Sissel wonders how much Lynne knows about Kamila’s sad story, and whether the kidnappers know about the powers of the dead…

Returning to the minister’s office, and speaking to Lynne via the Ghost World, Sissel tells her about Kamila being kidnapped in place of the minister’s daughter and taken to her old home, as well as Beauty’s apparent ability to sense his presence. Meanwhile, the minister’s still trying to insist that Lynne keep her distance from him and denying the existence of ghosts, despite clearly being able to overhear Sissel and Lynne’s conversation via the Ghost World.

Lynne tells the minister to just call his wife and ask to speak to his daughter if he doesn’t want to take her and Sissel at their word. The minister replies that he’s been trying to do just that, but for a reason he won’t disclose, his wife’s refusing to answer the phone. Lynne argues that that could mean there’s nothing to worry about, but the minister insists it doesn’t prove such, clearly assuming the worst. He then adds that he can’t get the police involved thanks to Beauty’s people keeping an eye on him, and that even if his daughter’s safe, an innocent girl is going to die either way if Jowd isn’t executed.

Cabanela then picks that moment to show up in the office, bringing with him the recently captured Jowd. Lynne calls him out on not telling her that Jowd was to be executed tonight, with Cabanela replying that he wasn’t obligated to tell her that. Lynne then asks Cabanela if he’s truly okay with his old friend being executed, insisting he has to know that Jowd wasn’t responsible for his wife’s murder, but Cabanela replies that all he knows is that Jowd was sentenced to death and later escaped prison. This prompts Lynne to question why Cabanela brought Jowd to the office instead of just putting him back into his cell, before she guesses that the inspector wanted to brag about his accomplishment to the justice minister and get yet another boost to his career. Cabanela is initially silent, but he eventually states only that he has principles he can’t go back on, before Jowd speaks up in defense of his old friend’s actions, reminding Lynne that he’s a death-row inmate who escaped prison.

Heading into the Ghost World, Sissel and Lynne tell Jowd about the kidnapping. Jowd is cavalier about someone going so far to ensure his death, but he becomes much less amused when he learns that Beauty and Dandy got his own daughter by mistake. Then Sissel decides to bring up to him and Lynne what Kamila said about causing her mother’s death, and he outright screams at Lynne to not listen, vehemently insisting that he killed Alma, and that his execution will end Kamila’s suffering. Sissel however calls him out on this; far from putting a stop to it, Jowd’s death will only give the freshly orphaned Kamila a new reason to suffer. The detective has no reply to that, and Sissel suggests that Jowd tell them what he knows.

Jowd admits that he doesn’t fully know what happened on the day his wife died; he just heard a gunshot come from within his home, and ran inside to find Kamila kneeling in front of the freshly dead Alma, with no sign that anyone else had been there. At the time, Kamila told him about her contraption, and how it had been tampered with to shoot Alma; while Jowd didn’t believe her entirely at the time, he did see that the antique pistol which featured in the contraption had been fired, and hid it away within a wooden box in order to protect his daughter. He later gave the box to a certain detective, with Lynne realizing that he’s referring to the same supposed music box she’s been taking care of since his arrest. After that, he doctored the scene to further implicate himself, then turned himself in for the murder. He admits that he came to believe himself truly responsible for it in the five years since, but then Sissel came along with his ghost tricks, and Jowd realized that similar powers had been at play when his wife died. Sissel points out that Beauty and Dandy both know about those powers, and Jowd remarks that his wife’s case isn’t coming to a close quite yet.

Leaving the Ghost World, Jowd confirms to Lynne that what he told her and Sissel is true, and Lynne declares that there’s therefore still time to solve Alma’s case and prove both Jowd and Kamila innocent. Jowd pauses, and then gives his support for the idea, the old fire he once had as a detective returning. Instructing Sissel to keep helping Jowd and look into the matter of the kidnapping again, Lynne departs for Temsik Park to retrieve the music box, the gun within being important evidence for the case and all that. Cabanela of course witnesses everything and asks what’s going on; Jowd tells him about Kamila, and the inspector takes note of his old friend’s newfound determination, before asking the minister for his thoughts on the matter. The minister insists that Jowd be taken back to the prison and executed; seemingly acceding to the command without protest, Cabanela makes arrangements for a prison van to come and pick Jowd up, before questioning if he’ll see another miracle like Jowd’s escape before it arrives.

Turning his attention back to the kidnapping, Sissel decides to talk to Jowd again, with the detective noting that the minister isn’t likely to call off the execution as long as there’s a possibility that Amelie’s being held hostage. It would be good if they could prove otherwise, he says, but Sissel replies that they don’t have much chance of that while the minister’s wife is keeping him from calling Amelie. Jowd reminds him that a telephone line takes calls from both directions, hinting that he should try and get Amelie to call the minister if the opposite can’t happen. With that, Sissel uses the phone lines to head to Amelie and her mother’s apartment…

Arriving at the apartment, Sissel finds Amelie safe in her bed, and still under the effects of her fever. The girl suggests to her novelist mother that they call the minister - it was his birthday until nearly an hour ago, after all - but the woman refuses and walks away, promping a moment of anger from her daughter. Still, it's not a total loss; Sissel notes that even if her mother's against it, Amelie wants to talk with her father.

Noticing the phone's been placed on a shelf alongside a lighter that Amelie got as a birthday present for her father, Sissel uses the former to burn a rope holding the shelf up, causing the shelf to tip and the phone to slide within reach of Amelie. The girl makes to call her father, but her mother stops her from doing so, reminding her that she's forbidden from talking to the minister tonight. Amelie asks why, and her mother explains that her father's about to make a big mistake; her witholding contact with his daughter from him is her way of getting him to change his mind. Amelie questions what her mother knows about it, claiming that all she does is write "weird" novels; this sends her mother into a rage, and she throws the phone up onto a higher shelf, before moving her writing desk towards the bed in order to better keep an eye on her daughter.

With the unwitting help of a nearby rat, Sissel manages to trap the novelist with the apartment's chandelier and get the phone back into Amelie's hands, and the girl calls her father a couple of moments later. The minister is naturally relieved to hear his daughter's okay, and he's also quite willing to forgive his wife's actions, admitting to Amelie that it's just as her mother had said; he'd been on the verge of making a terrible mistake moments ago. With some of the furrows on his brow disappearing, he encourages Amelie to make up with her mother; the girl hangs up and does just that, prompting Sissel to muse to himself on the occasional bizarreness of family life.

Of course, even with the minister's family drama solved, there's still the matter of Kamila being kidnapped. Sissel returns to the minister's office, where he finds the man still looking troubled, and an air of anxiety throughout the room. His instincts tell him that something big's about to happen.

As Sissel exits the phone line, the minister informs the others that he's confirmed Amelie's safety, before expressing his thanks for it. Cabanela then comments on his continued state of unease, questioning if there's something else on the minister's mind, and Sissel decides to head into the Ghost World to investigate the matter himself. There he finds that the minister's finally willing to acknowledge his existence; the thanks he expressed was meant for Sissel. He then asks if Sissel's powers allow him to control and manipulate people; after Sissel clarifies that he can't do that, the minister reveals to him and Jowd that he's known about the existence of someone with that power for a while now - a "manipulator", as it were - and that that's the reason Jowd's execution order caused him so much anguish.

Jowd suggests the minister tell them all he knows. The minister explains that following Alma's murder and the crimes committed by the other two inmates at Jowd's prison, Cabanela and the Special Investigation Unit looked into the cases. After learning that all of the culprits lacked both motives for their crimes and knowledge necessary to pull them off, they concluded that the trio had been coerced into committing them by a theoretical "manipulator", with the special prison subsequently being established to look into that theory. Jowd is skeptical that such a power of manipulation over others exists, and the minister replies that he had once thought the same, but that turned out to be a mistake.

Returning to the real world so that Cabanela can be involved in the conversation, the minister admits that he didn't believe Cabanela's initial report about the supposed manipulator, but then one month ago, he felt an unseen entity take control of his body and force him to sign Jowd's execution warrant, before handing it off to be carried out. He was unable to remember the event clearly - with Sissel figuring this to be a side effect of his being manipulated - and subsequently didn't realize what had happened at the time, but then he remembered the manipulator theory and put two and two together. He didn't make the truth public because he feared that such a revelation would demolish the nation's justice system, plus he didn't have any proof he'd been manipulated in the first place. Cabanela argues that he should've at least told the Special Investigation Unit, with the minister conceding the point and admitting that he'd been running away from the problem. He did confess what had happened to his wife though; she demanded he call off Jowd's execution and come clean about what happened, and moved out with Amelie when he failed to do so. In the end, it took Kamila getting kidnapped to make the minister realize he'd gone too far. The minister further adds that he's telling people to stay away out of fear that the manipulator would be able to reach him through them.

Sissel considers everything he's learned so far. He can accept that there's someone else around with powers of the dead - he's met Ray, after all - but he's not so sure about the person in question being able to control and manipulate living creatures. He puts it down to different ghosts getting different tricks, before the minister informs Cabanela about the manipulator being a deceased spirit, with him and Jowd then revealing the current presence of Sissel. Cabanela reacts in shock at this news, before claiming he's got urgent business to attend to and exiting the office at a fast pace.

Right after Cabanela leaves, Lynne calls the office from Temsik Park. She doesn't say anything about whether or not she's found the music box, only urging Sissel to come and join her. Sissel naturally does so, and as he heads through the phone lines, he thinks about the manipulator's involvement in Alma's murder and Jowd's execution, wondering if the manipulator had also been behind Lynne shooting him...

Lynne's thankfully still alive when Sissel joins her in the park - albeit having failed to find the music box - but the same can't be said for the guardian of the park, whose corpse is currently lying crushed beneath a large, ovoid statue. Heading back to four minutes before the guardian's death, Sissel learns that he had witnessed Kamila being confronted by Dandy - who it turns out had mistaken her for Amelie on account of her similar age and her leaving the apartment building at the same time Amelie would've left for her lesson - within a construction site right next to the park, and ran over to try and help. As Sissel watches the past events play out, Kamila hides the music box in a hole within a hedge separating the park and the construction site, with the guardian picking it up, before Dandy attempts to grab Kamila. The two of them end up struggling, and Dandy accidentally causes the statue to be dropped from a nearby crane, right above Kamila...

...and then the statue inexplicably swaps places with a nearby leaf hanging from a tree, resulting in it squashing the guardian instead.

Sissel naturally reacts in shock to this defiance of physics. The guardian argues it was something called "the rock of the gods" that led to his being killed by Mino - the name of the statue, and also the park's mascot - but Sissel wonders whether it could instead be a ghost trick of someone with greater powers than him. He goes back in time again and enters the Ghost World, and sure enough he finds a flame much like the one his soul takes there. The identity of the flame? None other than Missile.

Missile explains that after Kamila and Sissel left the former's apartment, he managed to open the door and get out himself, whereupon he began searching for Kamila. He eventually managed to find her at the park, but Dandy rode through on a moped and ran him down while he was heading towards her, killing him and knocking his body into a crater within the park. His spirit woke up later, and saw that Kamila had been crushed by Mino; initially distraught, he ended up managing to get into the Ghost World, and was then able to go back in time via Kamila's corpse after remembering how Sissel had saved him earlier in the night.

Sissel asks if Missile then used a ghost trick to keep Mino from crushing Kamila, but the loyal doggie replies that it wasn't quite that simple. He can jump between cores over greater distances than Sissel, but he can't move and operate objects in the same ways he can. He can however swap the positions of objects with identical shapes, with Sissel and the guardian realizing that this is what they saw happen to Mino and the leaf earlier. Missile adds that he had then tried to swap Mino with a rugby ball that had gotten stuck in another nearby tree, but the two objects were too far apart even for him.

Luckily though, Sissel's on hand to help out with his own ghost tricks now, and he and Missile work together to move the rugby ball into a position where Missile can swap it with Mino, thereby saving both Kamila and the guardian. Sissel then offers to try and reverse Missile's death as well, but Missile turns him down, believing he'll have a better chance of helping Kamila with his powers. Accepting his decision, Sissel prepares to head back to the present with the other two spirits, but asks the guardian to hand over the music box he retrieved to Lynne beforehand.

Sissel returns to the present and informs Lynne about what happened, admitting that he was unable to keep Kamila from being kidnapped. Lynne forgives him for it though, and Missile offers his own help from within the leaf, only for a sudden gust of wind to come and blow him away, separating him from the other two. The guardian then wakes up and hands the music box over to Lynne, but then goes silent upon getting a good look at her. In a halting voice, he asks if she's the same girl he met in the park ten years ago, with Lynne putting her hands to her mouth in realization of what he's referring to.

The guardian puts his and Lynne's reunion within the same park where they previously met down to an act by the gods. Noticing the choice of words, Sissel asks about the "rock of the gods" he mentioned earlier, to which the guardian directs him and Lynne to a monument positioned next to the crater currently serving as Missile's final resting place. The monument in question also mentions a "rock of the gods", and the guardian explains that ten years ago, a meteorite impacted the spot, and has remained buried in the earth ever since. He adds that it was responsible for a "miracle" back then, commenting that Lynne should surely know about it, but the detective has no idea what he's talking about.

The guardian reveals himself to be a witness of the confrontation between Jowd and the gunman who took Lynne hostage ten years ago, and that the incident in question took place within Temsik Park. He wasn't able to see the face of the gunman, but he did see the meteorite - which was subsequently named "Temsik" - hit during the confrontation; a fragment of it struck the man in the back, and thus allowed Jowd to save Lynne, with the guardian viewing the whole thing as a "miracle". He guesses that Lynne didn't remember things clearly due to trauma from the incident and her being a kid at the time, hence why she assumed Jowd was the one who saved her back then. Sissel then points out that such an incident should have caused enough of a stir for Lynne to at least hear about it secondhand, but Lynne replies that along with not going near the park afterwards, she also avoided the news, and thus remained ignorant of what had truly happened. The guardian adds that nowadays there are plans to develop the park into housing; out of respect for the miracle he saw ten years ago, he's campaining to stop them from being carried out.

As Lynne picks up Missile's body, Sissel thinks to himself that even if Lynne could remain unaware of the meteorite for all this time, there's no way Jowd can say the same. And if he knew, why would he claim responsibility for the gunman's death?

Heading back to the Justice Minister's office, Lynne is finally able to present the music box to Jowd, who pries it open, revealing the gun inside, which he gives to the minister. He points out the scorch marks from the string used to include it in Kamila's contraption, with the minister recalling that similar scorch marks were mentioned in the case report. Now having proof of Jowd's innocence, the minister calls off his execution, much to Lynne's relief.

Sissel and Lynne then decide to talk to Jowd, with Lynne bringing up the possibility that the manipulator had her shoot Sissel in the junkyard earlier in the night, though she can't understand why the manipulator would do such a thing. They then bring up the replica of Kamila's contraption that had been built within the super's office, the existence of which confuses Jowd; he's had no involvement with the junkyard in question, and he never told anyone about the contraption, leaving Sissel wondering who the superintendent could be if he was able to replicate it. Finally, Sissel asks Jowd why he blames himself for the gunman's death ten years ago, considering he would've seen the guy get hit by the Temsik fragment. Jowd explains that back then, he was a green, naïve cop who made the man panic, which is what caused the man to take a hostage. Not only that, but Jowd reveals who the man in the park was that day - he was the man he was painting earlier tonight. Sissel panics - That's him! And he's only just died tonight! But then Jowd reveals something else - the man in the park that day wasn't named Sissel. This leaves Sissel even more confused - who is he, then?

Just then, the phone rings again - it's Cabanela, from the super's office, demanding that they still carry out Jowd's execution, as they still have a hostage. Before anything can be clarified, he hangs up, leaving the minister in shock. Sissel, knowing something isn't right here, rushes over to the superintendent's office, expecting something bad to be awaiting him on the other side...

What Sissel sees in the super's office shakes him to his core.

it's Himself. His own body, standing over a now-dead Cabanela, gun in hand. The doppelgänger then gets on the phone to call the luxurious parlor, with the bushy-browed man - whose identity is Commander Sith - picking up. They speak of a deal, then hang up. It is then revealed that the parlor is actually inside a submarine, which then propels away to seas unknown. Back in the office, "Sissel" - the manipulator - taunts Cabanela as he leaves, laughing that he couldn't stop him.

Going back to four minutes before Cabanela's death, Sissel sees the manipulator forcing Cabanela to make the call to the Minister's office by gunpoint. Cabanela, writhing in pain, asks the manipulator why he's doing this. The manipulator taunts Cabanela, asking him what it's like to feel pain, before saying he's doing this out of revenge. When Cabanela refutes that the meteorite is what killed the manipulator, the manipulator slams his hand on the lit stove, not flinching even as it begins to smoke, before screaming that he was murdered by everyone involved that day - Lynne for being there to be a hostage, Cabanela for letting him have the gun he used to threaten her, and Jowd for chasing him to the park and making him panic. He also admonishes Cabanela for trying to maintain his "spotless record", even at the expense of his best friend. Cabanela then calls him self-centered, before drawing his gun and shooting the manipulator - to no avail, as the manipulator gets right back up, steals Cabanela's gun by ghost tricking the desk lamp, and shoots him.

This all leaves Sissel very shocked, but then Cabanela reveals himself to be awake within the ghost world. Seeing the other man's form, the inspector asks if Sissel was the one who shot him, with Sissel hesitantly replying that he must've been. Cabanela is doubtful of this however, considering he just saw the manipulator leave the office, and he asks who Sissel really is. Quietly accepting he's not the same "Sissel" as the manipulator, Sissel admits that he's searching for his true identity, and that he's willing to save Cabanela for the sake of his information on the manipulator. Unfortunately this is far easier said than done; the manipulator’s presence at the scene means that Sissel can only manipulate things while he isn't looking, or else he will immediately shoot Cabanela then and there. Unable to find any way to save the inspector, Sissel makes his way downstairs alongside the now awake Cabanela, and is shocked to find the basement in ruins, no more than a rubble heap. Discovering the superintendent's body in the middle of the rubble, Sissel and Cabanela make contact with him, and Sissel decides to see if he can find a path to saving Cabanela by saving the super first.

Going four minutes back again, Sissel finds Cabanela and the super examining the junkyard body on the table within the now undestroyed basement. As the super examines the body with a device that detects Temsik radiation, Cabanela tells him that the manipulations are due to a ghost, which prompts the manipulator to wake up and sarcastically congratulate the inspector for figuring things out. The manipulator explains that he is a spirit, possessing an empty shell of a body, and that he controlled everyone - including Lynne - tonight. A naturally furious Cabanela demands to know why the manipulator controlled Lynne, to which the manipulator answers that he wanted to frame her for murder and subject her to the same fate as Jowd. The manipulator then says that he's leaving the country soon, and is intent on killing everyone who knows about his powers. To that end he activates the recreation of Kamila’s contraption within the room; this time the cupid statue fires its flaming arrow in the direction Kamila had originally intended, only this time there’s a pack of dynamite there as opposed to mere party poppers. The dynamite explodes, killing the superintendent and putting Cabanela in his injured state, while somehow leaving the manipulator unaffected.

Before the rescue attempt begins, Cabanela explains to Sissel how the body got there. He'd found out that the medical examiner from the beginning was an impostor, paid off by the foreigners to bring the body to them, and bribed him to deliver it to the junkyard basement instead. He’d hoped to use the opportunity to discover the source of the manipulator’s powers, but of course he hadn’t exactly expected them to be powers of the dead. Something else is on Sissel’s mind at this point though; if Ray’s claim that spirits cease to exist at dawn is true, how can a spirit from ten years ago still be around?

Putting that thought aside for the moment, Sissel turns his attention to saving the superintendent. There’s a problem however; much like with Jowd and the electric chair earlier, if the manipulator’s attempt to kill the super is thwarted, odds are he’ll just do the deed through some other means. And it’s unlikely that Sissel will be able to affect the manipulator, given he didn’t so much as flinch from the explosion that injured Cabanela. The super suggests that they try and save him in a way that won’t be noticed by the manipulator, but Sissel finds himself unable to do so with the selection of objects within the room.

Just as it seems that all hope is lost though, Sissel happens upon Missile again, the late pomeranian still possessing the leaf from earlier as it’s carried through a nearby sewer. And while Sissel was unable to save the super, for Missile and his powers it’s a different story; he manages to swap the lid of a garbage bin with the trapdoor - the same one Lynne escaped through earlier - as the super is standing on it, causing him to fall to safety right as the explosion goes off. Cabanela of course is still injured, and the manipulator uses his powers to force him up the stairs and have him make his call to the justice minister. Sissel and Missile head after them - the former with help from the super and his pigeon - and get the idea to replace the bullet the manipulator fires with a soft knit hat on the opposite side of the room, where Cabanela's theatrics can trick the manipulator. It works, and Cabanela is saved.

The super remarks that thanks to Sissel and Missile, he’s now got all the answers he was looking for, with Cabanela adding that it makes all the research the two of them have been doing look near meaningless. Sissel notes the indication that the two of them had been working together in the past, and Cabanela explains that they were the ones who’d originally been investigating the manipulator, keeping it to themselves due to how unbelievable the whole thing sounded. Sissel then returns to the present, intending to further question the pair before he and Missile try to find Kamila.

The super reveals that ten years ago, he was a police medical examiner who was tasked with carrying out an autopsy on the manipulator's body. He never filed a report though, because that same body mysteriously disappeared from the morgue before the autopsy could be completed. He did however manage to discover it was an "unusual" corpse; the body had nary a scratch on it despite having been struck by a meteorite, and any cut made by the super would heal instantly, leaving behind no scarring or blood. Because of this, he was unable to perform the autopsy, and then the body vanished, preventing him from doing any further research. The super notes that an attempt to steal the body would never have gone unnoticed by the morgue’s security; the only way it could've disappeared is if it was able to move under its own power. It’s unbelievable, considering that body was confirmed to be medically dead, but that same body was seen literally walking off an explosion, a burn from a hot stove and a gunshot minutes ago.

Alongside the body's mysterious regenerative properties, the super discovered it also gave off a form of radiation unlike any previously found on Earth, which he eventually identified as identical to that of the Temsik meteorite. Suspecting he was dealing with some form of immortal being, he quit his job as a coroner so he could investigate the matter more closely, before finding out about the connection between it and the manipulator case when Cabanela paid him a visit several years later. The inspector explains that he got involved roughly a year ago, when he learned of the other man’s investigations into the Temsik meteorite. At the time, the police were starting to get leads on the manipulator; they had learned he was in contact with a foreign country (i.e. Sith's country), and had also heard him claim the source of his powers was “not of this world” in an intercepted communication between the two parties. Cabanela figured from this that the Temsik meteorite was the otherworldly source in question, and ultimately the means for how Kamila had been manipulated into rigging her birthday contraption to kill Alma.

Speaking to Cabanela, Sissel brings up the manipulator’s claim that the inspector was responsible for his fate, and Cabanela admits that’s not far from the truth. Prior to the events in the park, the manipulator had been brought in for questioning regarding a big case the Special Investigation Unit were looking into, with Cabanela, then a rookie member of said unit, assigned to take his statement. Wanting to impress the higher ups though, Cabanela attempted to grill the man for information, but only succeeded in pushing him into a mental breakdown, and later left his gun in the interrogation room after being called away. The desperate manipulator took it and used it to escape, and thus the events in the park were allowed to play out.

Regarding the manipulator's actions following that tragedy, Cabanela explains that he and the Special Investigation Unit learned the manipulator had offered his powers to Sith's country, and convinced it that said powers existed by “predicting” the events that led to Jowd’s fellow prisoners being locked away. Later on, they discovered the manipulator had been planning to meet with Beauty and Dandy - those two serving as the representatives of Sith's country - at the Chicken Kitchen (making the note about a ten o'clock meeting Lynne found on Sissel's supposed corpse a reminder for the manipulator), and staked out the place in the hope of catching them. Cabanela adds that the manipulator is planning to leave the country in a submarine belonging to the foreign country (the same one Sith's in charge of), but so far his people have been unable to tell where it’ll surface.

Sissel also brings up how much importance Cabanela places on his spotless record during the conversation. Cabanela is unrepentant about it; after all, it’s thanks to that spotless record that he’s able to direct the Special Investigation Unit and their investigation into the manipulator case. After Sissel reacts in shock to the reveal that Cabanela's actions were solely for that purpose, Cabanela explains that just like Lynne, he never believed Jowd's confession about murdering Alma; from that point on, he dedicated himself to advancing through the ranks by any means necessary, all with the goal of being able to prove Jowd innocent. Sissel questions why he didn’t try and help Jowd escape prison if he was trying to save him, to which Cabanela replies that doing so would’ve only added another charge to Jowd’s rap sheet, plus Jowd's request to be executed meant he was unlikely to co-operate with such a thing; thus Cabanela had to get the execution stopped through legal means. Similarly, him bringing Jowd before the minister after foiling his escape was a means of buying time for that to happen, contrary to Lynne’s thoughts on the matter.

Finally, Sissel asks about the replica of Kamila’s contraption in the basement, with the super admitting that he had built it as part of the investigation into Jowd; having previously worked with the man, he was able to use his case notes to recreate it, and he and Cabanela were able to determine it had been tampered with. Just then, Lynne barges into the room, and Cabanela apologizes for making that earlier phonecall, with Lynne in turn apologizing for not realizing that he had been trying to save Jowd all this time. Cabanela replies that he’d been trying to keep her uninvolved in the manipulator case for her protection, with Lynne correctly guessing that he’d had her arrested earlier for that purpose.

As Cabanela laments his failure to catch the manipulator, Jowd chooses this moment to enter the room, much to the inspector’s surprise. Lynne states that the execution order has officially been called off, and Jowd is free until morning. The superintendent, in celebration that Jowd has his old spirit back, gives him his old green coat that's been hanging in the room the entire time. Jowd puts it on, completing his transformation into the detective Lynne looked up to, and thanks Cabanela for the "present" from earlier. He and Lynne then leave to go track down the manipulator, with Lynne telling Sissel to stay by the phone until she can get him hooked up to the submarine, leaving him to ponder that even if he's now farther from knowing who he truly is than ever, at least he's not alone, and together everyone can shed the light on the truth - even if it's almost dawn...

Two hours before dawn, Sissel and Missile - still waiting at the super's office - get a phone call from Jowd, who instructs Sissel to join him on the other end of the line. Sissel does so, and finds himself back inside the luxurious parlor - in reality the control room for the Yonoa, Sith's submarine - alongside Jowd and Sith's large henchman. Sith himself is absent from the room, though he does address Jowd through the screen on the wall, questioning how the detective was able to track him to the Yonoa. Jowd explains that the bullet Cabanela fired at the manipulator in the super's office had a radio transmitter in it, which the detective was able to follow thanks to the pocket watch the inspector gave him in the prison courtyard; as it turns out, said device is actually a radio receiver disguised as a pocket watch.

Jowd then asks where the manipulator is, to which the large henchman responds by using the control console to make the chair previously occupied by Sith turn around, revealing the manipulator's currently motionless body sat down in it. Sith guesses that the manipulator is currently away possessing Kamila; hearing this, Jowd begs the blue-skinned man to let his daughter go, even offering himself as a hostage in her place, but Sith replies that he and his country aren't interested in hostages; they're here for one thing only, an object possessed by the manipulator...who just so happens to not be around right now.

The room's table then flips around, dropping the phone Sissel used to get to the Yonoa into the submarine's workings and replacing it with a glass capsule. Sith reveals he and his country are aware of the source of the manipulator's powers, before a small mechanical arm reaches out of the capsule and grabs the manipulator's body, yanking out the Temsik fragment that took the man's life ten years ago. The capsule and fragment disappear into the submarine's workings, before Sith - as the cherry on top of this reneging on the deal between his country and the manipulator - has the control room jettisoned from the submarine, Jowd, the large henchman and the manipulator's body still inside.

Sissel watches the above events from the safety of the submarine, but his thoughts are soon diverted when he hears an explosion come from elsewhere on the submarine. He and Missile then hear a ringing phone nearby, and head over there right as they hear another explosion. Discovering the caller to be Kamila, they head through the line to find themselves in the half-flooded engine room of the submarine, with a once again dead Lynne floating lifelessly within the water. Yep, the detective kicked the bucket for a fifth time.

The two spirits talk with Kamila, who recognises Missile as the one who saved her after she was crushed by the Mino statue earlier. When asked about what happened after she and Sissel spoke at her old house, Kamila replies that she was unconscious until after she had been taken onboard the submarine, and later found herself within the engine room, with Lynne discovering her soon afterwards. She doesn't remember what happened after that though, and Sissel guesses she must've passed out from exhaustion. He goes on to talk to Lynne, but the detective claims she blacked out before discovering herself to be dead, before asking about Jowd. Sissel brings her up to speed, and and Lynne elaborates on what happened to her and Jowd after they left the super's office; using the bullet fired into the manipulator by Cabanela, they followed the man to a small harbor, and later stowed away on a boat he took out to sea, which brought them to the area where the Yonoa surfaced. After sneaking onboard the submarine before it dived, the two detectives split up; Jowd to find a phone he could use to get Sissel onto the submarine, and Lynne to look for Kamila. She managed to find the girl of course, but just like Kamila, she can't remember what happened next either.

Leaving Missile to take care of Kamila, Sissel heads back to before Lynne's death. He finds her with Kamila, who wakes up and swings at the detective with a machine gun before revealing herself to be posessed by the manipulator. After recognizing him as the man who once took her hostage ten years ago, Lynne demands he let Kamila go, but the manipulator refuses, stating that he's on his last chance. Aiming the gun at Lynne, he reveals he's aware that Jowd's execution failed to take place, and thus he had been possessing Kamila in the hope of having her kill her father as revenge against the man. Lynne expresses sympathy for what happened to the manipulator ten years ago, but questions his desire for revenge; the manipulator begins to claim that nobody could possibly know what he's been through, before the two of them hear an explosion. The manipulator becomes unnerved - perhaps realizing too late he's been betrayed by Sith - before parts of the room's ceiling collapse down from above. Lynne rushes forward and pushes him - or rather, Kamila - out of the way, with the rubble crushing her right after.

Using an evacuation call made by a member of the Yonoa's crew, Sissel is able to get back beneath Sith's control room, where he and Lynne witness the replay of the commander's betrayal of the manipulator. They watch Sith take possession of the stolen Temsik fragment before detaching the control room and escaping in a small submersible with the rest of the Yonoa's crew, whereupon he reveals his intention of making sure the manipulator can't come after him following the double-cross. How he plans to do so is made clear when the Yonoa prepares to automatically launch a torpedo at itself, with Lynne recognising this as the cause of the explosion from earlier. Sissel manages to get onto the torpedo and activate the clamp on its fuse, preventing it from detonating on impact and saving Lynne, but the torpedo nevertheless causes a leak within the submarine's hull.

Returning to the present, Sissel discovers the engine room slowly filling up with water as a result of the torpedo's impact. He witnesses Kamila wake up and apologize for pointing a gun at Lynne while under the manipulator's influence, and goes over to rejoin them and Missile, after which the group turn their attention to escaping the engine room. With the pressure of the water already in the room making it impossible to open the door on the bottom level of the room, Sissel helps Lynne get Kamila up onto a balcony leading to another door, only for the submarine to suddenly tip backwards ninety degrees, sending both ladies falling to the room's rear. The flooding then picks up rapidly; Sissel and Missile use their ghost tricks to aid Lynne in climbing back up to the door with Kamila, but find themselves unable to open it. The water then comes up to Lynne's waist, and it seems she and Kamila are doomed...

...until the door is suddenly opened from above by a gigantic arm made from all manner of junk, which grabs Lynne and Kamilla before pulling them through to safety...

Sissel, Lynne and Missile find themselves within Sith’s private quarters of the still sinking Yonoa, Kamila and the junk arm within them. The junk arm turns out to be the manipulator; he reconfigures the junk into a humanoid form resembling his stolen body, before commenting on Lynne’s survival. He then turns his attention to Sissel, asking him if he’s the ghost who’s been saving Lynne over the course of the night; Sissel is taken aback at the manipulator’s knowledge of his existence, but the manipulator replies that it’s the only explanation for all the unnatural things that have happened. Lynne demands to know why the manipulator didn’t try and stop Sissel if he knew about him, as well as why he saved her and Kamila despite his aspirations of revenge, but the manipulator has no answers. Sissel then desperately asks who the manipulator is; as he does, his appearance reverts to that of a typical soul (albeit one with the manipulator’s sunglasses), Sissel no longer able to hang on to the image of himself as the man in red.

Sissel explains his situation to the manipulator, who suggests that he'll remember who the two of them are very soon. Indeed, having shed his false image of who he is, Sissel feels something start to stir within his mind, and senses he’s a step closer to the truth. Before he can figure out the rest though, the manipulator informs everyone that between the inoperable engine and the water leak, the submarine is effectively scuttled and sinking deeper into the ocean. Lynne questions why the manipulator’s with them if he made a deal with Sith and his country, to which the manipulator explains that Sith betrayed him, he and his people having figured out the truth behind Temsik and how it relates to the manipulator’s powers. Lynne asks the manipulator to elaborate, with the spirit agreeing to do so.

Having figured things out through observing the super’s research into Temsik, the manipulator explains that it’s able to grant supernatural powers to spirits, with himself, Sissel and Missile being three such recipients of these powers. He adds also that the powers can change with time, citing how he was only able to control small creatures when he first got his. As for how to get said powers, they’re granted to the spirits of those who die while exposed to Temsik radiation; the manipulator was of course struck in the back by a meteorite fragment, and the group figure out that Missile got his powers due to how he died within Temsik’s impact crater. From this, Sissel realizes that whoever he was, he too must’ve died in close proximity to Temsik.

Besides supernatural powers, Temsik is also able to grant spirits “time”, hence Sissel’s ability to go back to four minutes before a person’s death. In the manipulator's case there’s a different effect; thanks to the fragment of Temsik that remained stuck within it, his body has remained in the exact same state it was in just before his death; not aging or decaying, and instantly regenerating from any harm that might alter its appearance. Hence why the super was unable to autopsy it before its disappearance.

In regards to his revenge plot, the manipulator indicates that he was acting on behalf of both himself and another who had their life “stolen”, but doesn’t elaborate on this further. He explains that as part of his deal with Sith and his country, Sith and his associates were to help him with his scheme, with the attempted kidnapping of Amelie part of that; while the manipulator was able to get the justice minister to sign Jowd’s execution order, he feared the minister would retract it if not given an incentive to do otherwise. What he didn't realise at the time though was that Sith and his people were working with him in order to silence everyone outside of their group who knew about Temsik; Jowd, Cabanela, the super, the manipulator himself…and finally Lynne.

The manipulator reiterates that he would never have tried to use Lynne as a hostage if she hadn’t been in the park that fateful day, though he accepts that she was just a little kid who got caught up in things due to sheer bad luck. He explains that he had invited her to the junkyard as part of a trap; he revealed himself to be the gunman from ten years ago during their meeting - hence her surprised reaction on the tape - then just as Lynne suspected earlier, he manipulated her into shooting him, knowing she would be caught by the junkyard’s security cameras and implicated for his supposed murder. He wasn’t able to control her completely though, with Lynne’s initial wayward shot the result of her attempting to resist him. Sith on the other hand wanted Lynne outright killed as opposed to framed for murder, thus he sent Jeego to the junkyard to kill her, but of course Sissel intervened and saved Lynne's life. Following the events surrounding Lynne, the manipulator was supposed to meet up with Beauty and Dandy, but the disappearance of his body as a result of Cabanela forced him to instead spend the night trying to retrieve it, lest he lose the Temsik fragment within that he’d planned to use as his bargaining chip in the deal. Lynne questions why Sith would want her dead, since she’d never even heard of Temsik until tonight, and the manipulator explains that her investigation into Jowd’s case would’ve led to her learning about it sooner or later.

With everything now explained to everyone, the manipulator remarks that the current situation is as bleak as it can get for all of them; the water pressure will eventually crush and destroy the submarine, and there are no cores or communication cables the spirits can use to get back to the surface. The Yonoa is little more than a coffin for the dead, from which there's no escape. Listening to his summation, Lynne admits she’s got an idea of what things have been like for the manipulator the last ten years, causing him to go silent.

Kamila chooses this moment to wake up, though by now she’s overheard enough to know of the group’s current predicament. Lynne apologizes for being unable to save her, but Sissel brings up something interesting; if Sith just wanted to steal the manipulator’s Temsik fragment, why would he need to go to the trouble of jettisoning the control room with the manipulator’s body inside? The manipulator admits that’s a good question, but states that they’ll never find out, since they’ve no way of knowing the control room’s current location. Lynne however declares otherwise; she reveals that Jowd gave her the radio transmitter the two of them used to track the manipulator earlier, and proposes they use it to launch a torpedo containing Sissel and Missile at the control room in the hope of getting Jowd to help them.

Sissel, Missile, Lynne and Kamila head to the front of the submarine, where they find a manual launching system for the torpedoes, as well as a spare torpedo ready for launch. Lynne uses Jowd’s radio transmitter to get targeting coordinates for the control room, while also noticing that it appears to be sinking just like the rest of the Yonoa. Before the torpedo can be launched though, Missile requests that Sissel go after Jowd on his own, not wanting to be separated from Lynne and Kamila again. The two ladies convince him to accompany Sissel however, believing that if he does so, the two spirits may find a way to save them.

Before firing the torpedo, Lynne expresses regret that she and Sissel were never able to recover the latter’s memory, but admits that she’s nevertheless glad to have met him tonight, with Sissel returning the compliment. He and Missile assure Kamila that they’ll see her again, and Lynne - after stating she’ll never forget him - launches the torpedo, sending the two spirits towards the sinking control room, and their one slim chance of hope…

Jumping into the control room as the torpedo passes by, Sissel and Missile discover a dead Jowd, the manipulator’s lifeless body, and the large henchman still standing dutifully at attention. Jumping into Jowd’s body, Sissel explains his new appearance and the events on the Yonoa, causing Jowd to question why Sith would scuttle his own submarine. That question is answered by none other than the manipulator, who reveals himself to have secretly tailed Sissel and Missile to the control room; as he puts it, Sith was afraid of his powers. The manipulator addresses Jowd, who in turn recognizes him as a man named Yomiel; as it turns out, “Sissel” was just a codename he used in his dealings with Sith and his people.

Jowd and Yomiel discuss the latter’s past; prior to the Temsik tragedy, Yomiel was a top-level systems engineer who had been recruited to a government project aimed at building a new computer system for the nation’s top-secret information. Such a project inevitably drew the attention of enemy spies, and in the subsequent investigations, Yomiel - who had built the core of the system - came to be wrongly suspected and arrested for espionage, leading to that faithful interrogation at Cabanela's hands and the subsequent events within the future Temsik Park. After being hit by the Temsik fragment, he ended up turned into a spirit ignored and unacknowledged by the world at large, with the passage of time only exacerbating the great sense of loneliness he felt. Thus he came to desire revenge against Jowd, Lynne and Cabanela, with Alma’s death a means of giving Jowd a taste of the loss he’d endured. Then some time after that, he came up with the idea of using his powers to make a deal with Sith and his country.

Regarding the deal, Jowd asks what Yomiel would’ve gotten out of it. Yomiel answers that Sith and his country were to provide him with an artificial body and associated identity he could use to live a normal, human life, something only possible with access to the resources and influence of a national government. Instead though, he ended up underestimating Sith and his country, their spies learning of Yomiel’s powers and Temsik without his knowledge, and subsequently betraying him once they had the means to steal his Temsik fragment unopposed. Sissel questions why Sith and his people couldn’t have just stolen a bit of Temsik from the park instead of working with Yomiel, to which Yomiel explains that ever since Cabanela and the super submitted their report on the manipulator, the government has had the park put under close surveillance, with a team of hidden agents keeping watch over the place. Not the guardian though; he’s just a local eccentric. He has however been opposing them in his own way; the housing development scheme he’s been protesting against is just a front for Sith’s country to be able to dig up the site and extract Temsik.

Jowd remarks on how Yomiel’s goal of revenge has gotten him trapped at the bottom of the sea, with Yomiel regarding it as a fate he deserves at this point. Still, he’s at least managed to get Jowd stuck there with him, the detective adds. Sissel however is more than willing to try and erase Jowd’s death despite the circumstances; even when Yomiel dismisses such a thing as pointless, he states that he was guided to the sinking control room by fate, and he’s not going to give up now. With that, he, Missile, Jowd and Yomiel head back to four minutes before Jowd’s death.

Arriving in the control room of the past, the spirits listen as the living Jowd asks the large henchman where they’re going. The henchman replies that they’re going nowhere; like the rest of the Yonoa, the control room’s purpose is to just rust at the bottom of the sea once it runs out of power. He’s not particularly bothered about this; as it turns out, he’s actually a remote-controlled robot. Jowd asks why Sith and his people would go so far, claiming that Yomiel’s corpse is hardly a threat while his spirit’s away; the large henchman replies only that Sith likes to provide against any possibility, before having Jowd gunned down by a remote controlled machine gun within the ceiling.

Sissel takes note of the large henchman’s words; if Sith’s concern is valid, there must be some means of changing the situation within the room. Indeed, entering the ghost world, the spirits notice that Yomiel’s body no longer has an aura emanating from it, what with the Temsik fragment having been taken. Sissel possesses it, and Yomiel figures out what exactly Sith was so concerned about; with the Temsik fragment no longer within Yomiel’s body, it’s now just a regular corpse, meaning it can be used to go back to before Yomiel’s death. The spirits do just that, and as they travel back through time, Sissel notes that he’s seen all the clues about who he is; all he has to do now is remember…

Sissel, Missile, Yomiel and Jowd find themselves ten years in the past, four minutes before the arrival of Temsik radically altered the fates of them and many other people. They spot a young Lynne making roasted sweet potatoes for herself, before the Yomiel and Jowd of the past race into the park and initiate their faithful standoff. During the scene, a black kitten approaches Jowd, but gets shooed away, shortly before Temsik comes crashing into the park. Following the impact of the main meteorite, the fragment that pierced Yomiel’s back flies over a large fountain containing a Mino statue, before flying through a lamppost’s lantern and into the man.

Returning to before Yomiel’s death, Missile is - with help from Sissel - able to swap the lantern shattered by the fragment with the Mino statue, causing the fragment to be deflected away from Yomiel and instead pierce through Jowd’s leg. In spite of this injury however, the Jowd of the past is able to keep his gun trained on Yomiel, and fires off a shot at the man, seemingly condemning himself to be a killer. Missile however manages to swap the bullet with one of Lynne’s sweet potatoes, with the impact causing Yomiel to drop Lynne and get knocked into the lamppost currently supporting the Mino statue; he gets impaled on a spike on the lamppost, but he’s still alive.

Unfortunately, whether due to the impact of Yomiel’s body jolting it loose or gravity just doing its thing, the Mino statue starts to fall towards the now unconscious Lynne, and Jowd’s obviously in no state to run in and grab her before it can crush her. Yomiel’s spirit isn’t too bothered, since after all they can just go back and try to reverse her death if it does happen, but Sissel refuses to entertain this possibility; even if the young Lynne’s death was erased, she’d still remember it, and there’s no way he’ll let her endure that. With that, Yomiel devises a way to save Lynne using all three of the empowered spirits’ abilities; first, Sissel uses his powers of manipulation to have one of the fountain’s nozzles blast a jet of water at the lantern Missile swapped out for the Mino statue earlier, getting it above the now falling Mino. Next, Missile uses his powers to swap the two objects around again, keeping Mino from crushing Lynne for a few more seconds. Finally, Yomiel uses the window provided by Missile to possess his unconscious past self; he pulls himself off of the lamppost before grabbing Lynne and throwing her out of Mino’s way, with the statue instead landing on his legs.

With the matters of Temsik and the Mino statue resolved, Lynne comes to, and Jowd introduces himself before asking her to go and get the police, giving her a toy detective badge for motivation. Lynne heads off, and Jowd turns to Yomiel, discovering him to still be alive. The man naturally has no idea why he decided to save Lynne in such a manner, but he’s glad he did. Shortly afterwards, Lynne shows up with the motionless body of the black kitten from earlier; Jowd guesses it’s a stray, and observes that it’s been rendered unconscious, though he can’t see any signs of it being injured. He decides to adopt it, causing Yomiel’s spirit to remark that the kitten’s fate has just changed in a big way…

…and then he refers to the kitten as Sissel.

The name echoes in the head of our Sissel, who realizes that if nothing else, he was right about what he thought his name to be. Yomiel then claims that Sissel was his only friend over the last ten years; as he does so, Sissel sees the black cat from the junkyard walk in front of him, and realizes that his true identity is that very same cat! And with that, his memories finally return to him.

Ten years ago in the original timeline, Sissel was a weak, stray kitten who wandered into Temsik Park during the standoff between Jowd and Yomiel. After being ignored by Jowd and Lynne following Temsik’s impact and the standoff’s resolution, he found himself possessed by the freshly deceased Yomiel, and the two of them ended up living together in the same body for a short while. Eventually Yomiel regained his memory and recovered his own body from the police morgue; he later adopted Sissel, and named him for his deceased fiancee, the woman in question having committed suicide shortly after his supposed death out of a mistaken belief that she could join Yomiel in the afterlife. The two of them spent the next ten years together, with Yomiel even bringing Sissel to the junkyard when the time came for him to frame Lynne for his murder, carrying him in the same bag Sissel had been seen emerging from in the security tape.

Back at the beginning of the night, Yomiel had planned to use Sissel to exit the junkyard without revealing the truth behind his supposed murder, while also not wanting to abandon his friend when the time came for him to board the Yonoa and leave the country. Instead though, the manipulated Lynne’s wayward shot hit both Sissel’s bag and Sissel himself, rendering him another casualty in his friend’s revenge plot, while also granting him his ghost tricks due to the nearby Temsik fragment within Yomiel’s body. Sissel’s corpse was hidden from sight by both the bag and Yomiel’s own motionless body; with no memories of his past upon regaining consciousness, Sissel mistook Yomiel’s body for his own by virtue of it being the only one he could see, and thus he never regained his memories until now.

Sissel questions why Yomiel never tried to stop him interfering in his revenge scheme, given he admitted to knowing what he was up to earlier. Yomiel replies that he couldn’t have done so; he reminds Sissel that the powers granted by Temsik vary between individuals, and he never got the ability to travel back in time and erase deaths, otherwise he would’ve saved both Sissels by now. The only reason he was able to go back in time here was because he tagged along with Sissel and the others. In any case, Jowd remarks that thanks to their alterations to the Temsik incident, the fates of Yomiel, his fiancee and his cat will almost certainly have changed dramatically.

The detective comments that Yomiel’s revenge plan has failed, but Yomiel replies that he’s okay with that; he gave up on wanting revenge after Lynne proved able to empathize with his situation back on the Yonoa. And with that, the spirits prepare to leave the past and check out their new present, Yomiel noting that they’ll retain their memories of the previous timeline, including his willingness to threaten Lynne. He assures the others that he doesn’t intend to run away from this, and also apologizes to Sissel for getting him killed earlier in the night, but Sissel forgives him; it’s all in the now nonexistent past, after all. With that, Yomiel thanks Sissel - who will become like a complete stranger to him in the new timeline, and vice versa - and both spirits express gratitude for getting to meet each other. Missile then questions if he and Sissel will ever see each other again; Sissel is certain of it, and both animals agree to not forget each other.

With all matters resolved, Sissel and the other spirits travel to the present day. Before Sissel can see the new present though, he is unexpectedly met by Ray, who thanks the cat for everything he’s done, claiming it’s all he’s hoped would happen. Sissel reminds the other spirit that he was only trying to find his memories and identity, and Ray replies that he’s well aware of that, claiming to know all about Sissel. This prompts Sissel to ask who Ray really is, and the other spirit agrees to explain things.

Ray begins by telling a story of another past timeline, in which Sissel never intervened to save Lynne. In this timeline, Jeego and Yomiel traveled to Lynne’s apartment after the detective’s murder, where they killed Kamila and Missile before retrieving the music box that could’ve cleared Jowd’s name. Thanks to Yomiel’s presence, Missile gained his familiar ghost tricks when he was killed; he subsequently tried to save Kamila, but was unable to do so without Sissel’s powers, and thus he followed after Jeego and Yomiel in the hope of finding another way to save her. As happened in the previous timeline, Yomiel was eventually betrayed by Sith, his spirit and body condemned to the sinking Yonoa. By this point, Missile had managed to get into the jettisoned control room; he used Yomiel’s corpse to travel back to Temsik’s impact ten years ago, and then waited for the night on which he, Lynne and Kamila would be murdered to begin again. This causes Sissel to realize that Ray is none other than the Missile of the past timeline.

Ray explains that after waiting ten years for the chance to save Lynne and Kamila again, his powers had become weak, and thus he decided to get Sissel’s help. Sissel recalls Ray being able to manipulate the lamp in the junkyard - the result of his powers changing with time, just like Yomiel’s did - and asks why he didn’t work with the younger spirit of Missile. Ray explains that neither version of him had the ability to travel through telephone lines, a vital power for one looking to chase someone. Sissel then questions how Ray knew so much about him; Ray answers that he visited the junkyard prior to traveling back ten years, and discovered Sissel - who had been killed and rendered amnesiac back in that timeline as well - manipulating a desk lamp. That version of Sissel refused to help Ray save Lynne, wanting only to recover his lost memories, and left the junkyard using its payphone.

Sissel apologizes for not helping Ray in the past timeline, and Ray admits that following those events, he decided to make use of Sissel's desire to regain his memories when the time came for Lynne to be murdered again, believing it would benefit them both. Thus he told Sissel that the events surrounding Lynne were connected to his lost memories, and claimed he would cease to exist by dawn in order to give him a time limit. It was all a lie, of course; Ray just wanted to make sure Sissel would act quickly enough to get to Yomiel’s body before it could be lost to the depths of the ocean.

Having given his explanation, Ray declares it's time to say farewell, since he’ll cease to exist once the past timelines are overwritten by the new present. He again thanks Sissel for his actions, and Sissel thinks to himself about how Ray - or rather, ‘‘Missile’’ - was willing to wait ten years just to save Lynne and Kamila. The ever loyal pomeranian replies that that’s just what dogs do.

The new timeline is shown. Today, Lynne has become a detective and Kamila has built a contraptation for it to celebrate. With Yomiel's plan foiled, Alma is still alive with her family. Kamila then introduces Lynne to Sissel and tells her something very peculiar about him: the kitten hasn't aged once in the ten years. Turns out, Sissel was the one who got hit by the meteor fragment, making him the immortal ghost possessing a body. So if something ever comes to pass, Sissel still has his powers to help.

Meanwhile, life is going well for the other characters. Cabanela arrives for the celebration, the blue detective is imitating the inspector’s dancing while going down the stairs, Memry plants a bug in the police chief’s and Rindge’s chicken to eavesdrop on who they’ll promote to the Special Investigation Unit, the curry-loving prisoner orders a new menu item he suggested at the Chicken Kitchen, Beauty and Dandy fail a heist, Emma and Amelie are visiting the Justice Minister’s work, Sith gets scared by his assistant’s head popping off, the rockstar prisoner is playing at Temsik park, the Park Guardian is waving pamphlets around, and Bailey is dancing.

As for Yomiel, he has been serving a prison sentence ever since the kidnapping. After finishing a painting of his cat, a guard comes in and tells him his sentence is up, with his fiancee waiting. Before leaving, he thanks Sissel.