Chapter Text
To be honest, Mystery had named his building 'Skull Apartments' to ward off tenants.
Only the normal ones, though.
Mystery was a people person, because 'people person' sounds better than 'human shape-shifted kitsune with a propensity for dark magic and observing humans'. He had gone into the world of letting out apartments for the uniqueness of it all, not for the normalcy.
He didn't want Linda with her kids Cayden and McKarty and her PTA work, he didn't want Mr. Benson with his 9-to-5, he didn't want Brad and Tiffany pregnant out of senior year (“But like, it's totally gonna work out!!”).
No, Mystery wanted only the most interesting (read: entertaining) tenants in his apartment buildings.
There were four floors to Skull Apartments. The building was lovely, walled with purple painted stones, the sparse yards fenced in by elaborate metal bars. It was imposing to some, but that was all part of the plan, part of the charm.
On the first floor resided Mystery's own apartment, out of sight, and out of mind. His actual name was Benjamin, but he preferred that everyone in the building knew him as a mystery and as Mystery only. (Observations were made best when the observed didn't know that they were being so.).
Along on the first floor resided the 'normies', as Mystery mentally called them. They were the Linda's and Benson's and Tiffany's, the normal people who dove in for cheap rent, would get a sense of how creepy the building was after a while, and would leave before they were fully unpacked. Mister Mystery didn't show them much attention other than to unnerve them a little, scrape a little bit of rent from them before creeping them out a tad and sending them on their way.
The second floor was let out to four, technically five, people. Rather, four people and one ghost. Or, rather, three people, one ghost, and one whatever-the-fuck that Miss Shiromori was.
There was Shiromori in apartment 2A, who's apartment was filled with all things botanical, and a few magical. Mystery offered her polished grins that hid his pointed teeth, and she glared back with polite smiles.
There was Duet and Chloe in 2B. They were nerds. That was all. Their cosplays and bickering over what Star Trek captain was the best was at least mildly entertaining on slow days, so Mystery let them stay.
And there was a young man named Jonathan in 2C, who was mostly normal, save for the fact that he had a ghost tailing him and trying to tempt him into suicide. (Mystery wasn't very particularly concerned. Jonathan was resilient, and during the more interesting arguments Mystery would just tune in with kitsune-dog-supernaturally aided hearing and break out the popcorn).
The third floor was one that no one dared enter.
Because it was being fumigated. Prior to that lived a woman named Nan and her boyfriend Lorenzo, both whom seemed too much like goats, a beady eyed pickpocket named Santiago, and a rather unnerving priest that was always referred to as Padre who gave even Mystery the chills.
He was a little glad that the third floor needed to be fumigated.
(He'd continue it 'needing to be fumigated' until Santiago and Padre moved on. Nan and Lorenzo could stay, though, although since the floor had been 'under construction' for months now, he doubted any of those tenants would be back.)
The fourth and final floor was the most important by far, and the most interesting by far.
It was ever so eloquently referred to as the Hall Of No Return.
Three people went in, and they never came out, for various reasons or another.
There was Arthur Kingsmen in 4A, who's crippling anxiety and agoraphobia lead to him being terrified of taking a step out of his apartment. The man was riddled through and through with anxiety, and it was quite clear that he'd rather die than open his door or speak a word.
There was Lewis Pepper in 4B, and he was the only one in the entire apartment building who was able to get away without paying rent. It was because, of course, he was dead. A suicide in the apartment had chained him to it, and although Lewis would have liked to move on into the afterlife, or anywhere else besides a dingy apartment for that matter, he found himself spiritually bound to his only home.
In 4C resided a woman named Vivi and only Vivi, who's infliction weren't mental or spiritual, but physical. She worked from home, and had a handful of disabilities that made leaving the apartment too much for her. She earned Mystery's respect the day she smacked Santiago upside the head with her cane when he leered at her ass once.
The fourth floor was the hall of no return, because although Vivi, Lewis, and Arthur had all entered, they didn't leave.
If you slipped into the hall in the middle of the night you might see Lewis's flames licking the bottom of his door, maybe a shoe or a curl of hair if you're lucky. If you woke up early on Saturdays, you might be able to see Vivi getting her groceries delivered to her, edging out of the apartment just enough to let the delivery man in to do the heavy lifting her chronic illnesses didn't allow her. If you sat outside Arthur's door for a week you wouldn't see one sign of life at all, but the occasional muffled noise or a twitch of electricity would remind you that he was there, and he was still alive.
The three didn't leave, the three didn't know one another, and the three were all rather settled in their roots.
Of course, Mystery was a man of entertainment. Not one of torture, no, so he wasn't as drastic as he could have been. He could have lit the building on fire, and saw what would happen to the ghost, the agoraphobic, and the disabled. He could have gave them a sudden notice of eviction and watched them crash and burn. There were dozens of things he could have done, some cruel, some horrifying, but although Mystery loved to watch the world burn, he loved to watch it blossom even more.
Although, the bumpy drama that would ensue would provide entertainment too, so his actions weren't entirely selfless.
Half for his trio of apartment dwellers, and half for him to watch human and ghost life unfold in the ways that it only would if he pushed the right buttons, nudged the right people, and pulled the right strings.
“Hello, yes, is this the post office? Yes. You see, I require a new mailman. I own the apartment building on the corner of Sixth and Main – yes, Skull Apartments, that's the one. Why? Well, the current mailman has been coming here for years, he's getting rather up in age. We might possibly be having to do elevator repairs, and I wouldn't want him to be hurt by trying to scale our floors for the sake of mail. Yes, I see. Yes. Perfect. Thank you. Good day.”
People were rather easy to play.
And with that, things started sliding into motion.