Illusion Report

"Wait!"

Shoving the back door open, Jin Xueli stepped out into the night.

The air in the dim, damp alley was faintly tinged with the smell of a nearby dumpster. Other than them, the alley was empty.

The man and woman up ahead heard her call and turned around. For some reason, after they had stepped outside, they had stopped in their tracks instead of walking on. Now, they were only a step or two away from Jin Xueli.

When they turned at her call, both wore the dazed expression of someone just waking from a deep dream, as if they had been standing outside the door in a stupor for a few seconds before Jin Xueli came out.

’These two are acting a little strange.’

’Is it because of the environment?’

The pale sensor light above the back door looked like it was about to die. It failed to illuminate anything, instead casting the pair in a ghoulish light, as if some invisible black mist was swirling around them like a specter.

’...I probably don’t look much better myself.’

"Are you looking for us?" the pale, soft-looking man, who seemed like an easy target, asked cautiously. "Do we know each other?"

"No," Jin Xueli replied. Just then, Megan followed her out, and the back door slammed shut behind them with a BANG.

"You have an Illusion you’re looking to sell, don’t you?" she asked the slender woman. She had noticed in the bar that the item belonged to her.

"She’s interested in your Illusion," Megan added. "This is perfect. You can go back inside and talk it over."

"...Megan?" The genius masochist seemed unsure, craning her neck forward slightly and squinting as she asked.

With the back door closed, the surroundings were plunged into darkness. It was hard to see each other’s faces clearly—they probably didn’t even know who had followed them out.

"It’s me," Megan said.

With an employee from the Between the Backlight bar present, this should have been a done deal. The two would surely be happy to go back inside with her to negotiate a price and make the trade with Chaisi. Yet, just as Jin Xueli was about to turn and open the door, she heard the woman ask, "Can we do this another day?"

"Huh?" Jin Xueli froze. "Why?"

"Sorry," she said with what seemed to be an embarrassed smile. "It’s really not a good time right now. If you’re in a hurry, how about we find another place to talk?"

Jin Xueli remembered that in the bar, the woman had given off a gentle and warm impression. Now, her voice was just as steady and warm, instantly putting one at ease.

"Sure," Jin Xueli agreed at once. "Wait for me. The person who wants to buy it is actually my companion. I’ll go get him."

"Please be quick, then,"

the woman said gently, standing under a half-transparent line of "XX" characters hanging in the air.

"No problem, he’s right inside." Jin Xueli turned and reached for the door. At that same moment, a thought belatedly surfaced.

’...XX?’

’What XX?’

’Why are two random letters floating above that woman’s head?’

The thought flashed through her mind. She glanced down and found her hand gripping the back door’s handle.

There was nothing strange about that—she had been about to open the door anyway.

What was strange, however, was that her feet hadn’t moved.

’Logically, there should be some distance between me and the door. I’d have to take at least half a step forward to reach it...’

Jin Xueli’s gaze traveled up from her hand, and she quickly understood.

’Ah, so it detached at the elbow.’

Her forearm and upper arm had separated at some point. Her forearm and hand were now drifting lazily in midair, hooked around the door handle.

There was no blood or mangled flesh at the stump of her upper arm, just a smooth, rounded patch of skin, as if it had been that way since birth.

’...Huh?’

Faced with such a bizarre sight, what surprised Jin Xueli was her own complete lack of surprise.

She turned her head to look behind her again. For the first time in her twenty-eight years of life, the movement was effortless and smooth. She felt no pull from skin or muscle, no resistance from bone or sinew. It was as if her neck had become a stick of melting butter.

’No, it’s more like I don’t have a neck anymore.’

Jin Xueli felt her head floating gently in the air, once again facing the man and woman. Her body remained far off, still facing the back door.

The man and woman, along with Megan beside her, saw what had happened to her, but none of them seemed surprised—because none of them cried out in shock or confusion.

"XX" also floated above Megan’s head, but the man had "XY" above his.

’Ah, so they’re chromosomes.’

’...Why is this happening?’

Jin Xueli’s peripheral vision seemed to catch something.

She shifted her gaze in that direction and discovered a greyish-white cloud of mist hovering faintly in the air next to her ear.

Like a speech bubble in a comic, the greyish-white mist tapered to a long point, the tip of which was aimed at her, as if to indicate it had come from her.

Words floated within the misty speech bubble.

(Emotions. Current emotions: terror, fear, confusion, surprise, doubt, bewilderment)

Looking closer, she saw that everyone had a misty "speech bubble" floating beside them, and the emotions written inside were all more or less the same.

"Does anyone know what’s happening?" Megan asked calmly.

"I don’t know," the woman’s voice was gentle but devoid of any emotion. "This is new. First time seeing something like this."

In the misty speech bubble by her ear, besides the same emotional nouns as Jin Xueli’s, there was another word: "novelty."

"Oh, look,"

the man said, lifting his head. As he did, his head also floated lightly off his body. "There’s more stuff in the air..."

(Path, leap from a tall building)

(Path, crash into a large screen)

(Path, seawater)

(Path, slap the ceiling while leaping into midair)

Four heads bobbed and swayed in the air. For a moment, no one spoke.

As long as no one claimed their Path, no one would know whose was whose. Hiding one’s Path was meaningless at this point, of course; it was just a Hunter’s habit.

"Instead of saying there’s more stuff, I think it’s more like things from inside us are being projected into the air," the woman analyzed.

"True," Jin Xueli agreed.

"Once you can’t feel emotions, even if you rationally know this situation is wrong, there’s no motivation to escape it," Megan said.

"Yeah, your emotions are floating next to your ear instead of being in your head, so you can’t feel them," the weary-looking man replied. ’It’s absurd that the letters above his head aren’t XM.’

Just from his tone, it sounded like they were all in an incredibly boring meeting. "So pure reason alone isn’t enough to drive a person to action."

Jin Xueli, however, thought that with their heads and bodies separated, it was hard to say how much reason any of them had left.

"Oh, my Illusion," the woman suddenly murmured.

Though she’d murmured it, her tone was completely flat.

Jin Xueli followed her gaze and saw a long, black, snake-like shadow slowly unfurling from her disembodied torso. Unexpectedly, besides the lipstick, she had another Illusion coiled around her.

Now that she looked, the lipstick was also floating beside her.

The man let out an "ah" and started to say, "Good thing you didn’t..." but stopped short.

In the emotion bubbles by both her ear and the man’s, the word "worry" had appeared.

But when she spoke, she sounded exactly the same as before, with no trace of worry. "...Can you open the door?"

Jin Xueli realized the woman was talking to her.

"My vision isn’t working too well right now. My head feels like a balloon floating on water; it’s not very obedient, and I can’t just look wherever I want. I assume it’s the same for all of you?"

Jin Xueli wanted to nod, but since the woman was right, she just made a sound of agreement instead.

"From what I saw in my peripheral vision before I lifted my head, it looked like our bodies are still ’leaking’ a lot of stuff. ’Leaking’ might not be the right word, but I don’t know how else to describe it... It’s like we’re dissolving."

"Are we turning into... component parts?" Jin Xueli guessed.

"Possibly."

This guess was clearly met with unanimous agreement.

If this continued, and if their cognitive abilities and language processing also separated, they would no longer be able to communicate at all.

"If we can get the door open, maybe we can call for help from inside the bar," Megan said.

Although they lacked emotion as a motivator, it seemed forcing themselves to act wasn’t entirely impossible.

Jin Xueli said, "I’ll try," and her head wobbled toward the back door. It overshot its mark, ending up facing the alley, and she had to struggle to turn it back bit by bit.

’Looking back must just be a habit,’ she thought. ’After all, my hand and head aren’t attached to the same body anymore.’

She didn’t know how the bioelectric signals from her brain could cross the physical distance to make the muscles in her distant hand contract. All she could do was chant "open the door" over and over in her mind like a monk, visualizing herself pressing down on the handle.

She went through this motion in her head several times. After what felt like two or three minutes, the door remained motionless.

"You can do it," the weary man’s encouragement offered absolutely no strength.

Jin Xueli didn’t even know how to "do it." No matter how hard she tried in her mind, her hand remained a distant, unconcerned spectator.

But she forced herself to keep trying. ’Taking action without emotion is so dry and difficult.’ After an unknown number of attempts, the door handle suddenly dipped, and the door was pulled open a crack.

"Excellent," Megan said calmly.

’No, that’s not right...’

The door hadn’t been pulled open by her. Jin Xueli suddenly realized it had been pushed open from the inside.

The person pushing only opened it a crack before stopping.

She struggled to make her head float toward the crack, trying to see who was behind the door.

"...It’s empty outside. There’s no one here."

Through the crack, one of Han Liuyue’s black, pore-like eyes met Jin Xueli’s gaze.

However, from the sliver of her snow-white face that was visible, it was impossible to tell if she was lying or whether she had seen Jin Xueli at all.

"Go out and check,"

Chaisi’s voice sounded from behind Han Liuyue. "They might have walked off. Go search carefully."

He still used the tone of someone giving an order to a subordinate. Unfortunately for him, the person in front of him was no longer his subordinate.

"I’m not going," Han Liuyue said. "Whether they live or die has nothing to do with me."

For a few seconds, no one behind her spoke.

"...Then get out of the way," Chaisi finally said in a low voice. "I’ll go."