Eiji Ōwada

**Eiji Ōwada** (大和田 英児, *Ōwada Eiji*) is a college student from Kyoto and the true identity of the serial murderer known as Night Prowler.

## Background

Eiji is the younger brother of Yukie, who were both raised by their parents. Several years later, their parents died in a car accident. At some point, he presumably went to college in Kyoto and lived in a flat most likely alone.

By late 2015, he was assumed to have taken a penchant with the horror slasher game *Screaming Castle* and began imitating the storyline of the video game about a serial killer who kills four people at an abandoned castle. For some time, he stalked his targets who were women in their twenties, closely monitoring their activities and taking photographs of them. All of this evidence were posted and pinned in his secluded room, including photographs, news clippings, and posters of the horror game.

On 29 December 2015, he murdered Mai Kawaguchi, a college student, in a forest in Kyoto by stabbing her from behind, plunging a knife 15 cm deep into her body. Similar with his future victims, he placed a crumpled piece of paper in her mouth with some undecodable writing. According to the testimony of the woman who found the victim, there were no hints of the perpetrator's belongings in the area. Moreover, the culprit could not be traced, making it difficult to locate him. This was the first of the street assaults that would throw Kyoto into a serial murder frenzy.

A week later on a Tuesday, 5 January 2016, he killed Shiori Yamano in an unnamed children's park in Kyoto in a similar fashion as his previous victim: he stabbed her from behind using the same knife and placed a piece of paper in her mouth, also with an inexplicable writing. This made the Kyoto Prefectural Police connect the first and second murders to be serial in nature, specifically bizarre murders whose targets are females at least 20 years old. News about the two murders quickly proliferated throughout the city, though the police deliberately concealed some facts such as the killer's signature message through the papers in the victims' mouths to avoid copycat killers.

## Appearance

Eiji is a tall young man with black straight hair that reaches his nape, with disheveled bangs swept to and covered most of his left forehead. Under the persona of Night Prowler, he wore dark clothing, including a black hoodie — whose hood he always utilised to avoid detection and recognition — under a black outerwear, dark grey pants, and shoes.

After being hospitalised, he wore the standard patient apparel, consisting of a blue hospital kimono with loose sleeves and wore a jacket over this, such as a black hoodie. On another occasion, he wore a brown hoodie with camouflage patterns over it along with black closed sandals. Due to his accident, he is also heavily bandaged, including his forehead, his left cheek, and his right arm placed in a sling. He also frequently uses a wheelchair from then on while in the hospital.

## Personality

Upon his first appearance, Eiji is apparently calm and reserved, even after hearing upon his sister's death at the hands of a serial killer. However, he is soon revealed to have a sort of bloodlust mixed with an apparent curiosity of merging reality and fiction, resulting in his adoption of a serial killer persona from a fictional game. Furthermore, his manner of killing his victims by stabbing their vital organs from the back, whether intentionally or not, may be due to his knowledge of human anatomy as deduced by a journalist and former policeman.

## Plot

### Night Prowler Assaults

On 12 January 2016, a Tuesday exactly one week after the second incident, Eiji, under the guise of Night Prowler, closely follows Chisa Mizuo around Kyoto. When they reach an unnamed park with no people around, he catches up with her and stabs her from behind with a knife despite her effort to flee from him. As with his other victims, he places a piece of paper in her mouth, in which was written "*Night Prowler*", before disappearing from the scene.

The next day, he gets involved in a car accident and is taken to Kyōyama University Hospital to be treated. His sister, Yukie, is somehow contacted in Tokyo during her business trip and rushes back to Kyoto after learning of her brother's accident.

On 16 January 2016, Eiji is visited by Keiichi Sakashita and two others from the Kyoto Prefectural Police at the hospital to inform him about his sister's death at the hands of Night Prowler. Sakashita calmly explains how his sister died, having utilised the last of her strength to contact the police in order to inform them of three possible leads: that she was "*attacked randomly in the street*" by "*Night Prowler*" who had "*brown hair*".

Later, Eiji receives a visit from criminologist Hideo Himura and mystery writer Alice Arisugawa at the hospital. Himura asks him about his sister's pet bird, followed by a possible reason behind how she carelessly threw out its bird cage given her methodical attitude. Eiji thinks that the bird may have died and that she did not need the cage anymore. Himura quickly informs him that Yukie was not murdered by Night Prowler but, rather, committed suicide and made it look like she was attacked by the serial killer. In other words, after explaining his hypothesis, Himura identifies Eiji as the real Night Prowler, despite Eiji's initial denial. In the end, he confesses his crime, claiming that he merely wondered how it felt by merging the virtual world and reality. As Himura declares "game over", Nabeshima, Ono, and Sakashita arrive to apprehend Eiji.

## Quotes

* (To Himura and Alice) "*Why are you accusing me of being Night Prowler? Then, what? Do you want to say that my accident was punishment from heaven?*"
* (To Himura and Alice) "*You know, they say that some people begin to mix the virtual world and reality. I wondered how it felt.*"

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 *Screaming Castle Murder Case*