Illusion Report

Chaisi remembered everything that happened next, but it wasn’t a memory.

A person’s memories are always subjective, centered on the self. You look out from your own eyes, through your own body, remembering smells and sounds, textures and light... and the emotions that follow, whether joy or anger.

Chaisi’s "memories" were more like reading a diary written by a stranger.

Every event—or rather, every image—seemed like rootless duckweed, all floating aimlessly together in his mind. He had to use logic and analysis to figure out what happened first and what followed.

For instance, the figure suddenly reverted to the appearance of Daiju Monroe: messy brown curls tied loosely to one side, slightly chapped lips, bright, shining eyes, and a faint sheen of sweat on her forehead—his mother opened her mouth.

She seemed to be getting dragged back by some unseen force, her feet clawing at the carpet, tearing it as she was pulled back inch by inch with a ripping sound. She reached out to Chaisi, her voice urgent. "Chaisi, please, grab me, won’t you? Mom’s about to—"

Chaisi watched her as if in a dream.

The right side of his chest had been pierced, and his left hand was pinned beneath Damian’s body. He couldn’t move; he could only stare.

The next second, her hand, along with his mother, was sucked away as if pulled through the ruptured door of an airplane cabin. She, along with Damian’s Path, shrank rapidly and vanished, swallowed by a dark vacuum, never to be seen again.

’That,’ he would later think, ’was the moment Damian truly died.’

That was the last time Chaisi ever saw Daiju Monroe.

He lay beneath Damian’s body, as if submerged in a tub of spilled blood, the last of his brother’s warmth seeping into him, warm and wet. His consciousness was fading.

The sound of footsteps rapidly approaching in the hall faintly pulled him back to his senses. With a loud BANG, Uncle Kai threw the door open, only to freeze in the entryway, stunned for a second or two.

Without a word, Kai Luonan rushed straight toward Chaisi.

The next moment, his brother’s body—the corpse that had been keeping him warm—was lifted off him, and an empty chill rushed in to take its place.

A half-strangled, inhuman sound tumbled from the throat of Uncle Kai, who was usually so calm and composed. A moment later, he didn’t even dare to speak loudly.

"Damian?" he called out softly, pleadingly, his voice a trembling, thread-like whisper. "Damian, wake up. Open your eyes... Damian?"

Even then, Uncle Kai had probably realized that Damian was already dead.

But he still snatched up the phone and roared at 911, then grabbed Aunt Hai to stop her from rushing into the room, staining her white nightgown with blood. He slapped Chaisi’s cheeks, demanding to know what had happened...

Chaisi had to carefully arrange the next few fragments of memory in the right order.

He lay in a hospital bed, recounting the events to Uncle Kai, whose expression was as dark and still as deep water.

He was experiencing a new and entirely different kind of fear. He didn’t know what Uncle Kai was thinking, or what he would decide to do. Chaisi couldn’t even find absolution through his story, because he didn’t dare to reveal the entire truth.

Uncle Kai’s eyelids were half-lowered, his slightly clouded, gray-blue eyes studying him from the shadows, as if Chaisi were some kind of wild beetle he’d never seen before.

From far down the hall, the occasional, piercing cry from Aunt Hai could be heard.

For several days during his hospital stay, his bedside remained empty, as if the entire world had forgotten about the boy named Chaisi in the hospital. On the day of his discharge, he sat dazedly on the edge of the bed, with no idea where to go, or where he *could* go.

Damian’s funeral was held while he was still in the hospital.

After his narrative faltered into silence, a long few minutes passed before Uncle Kai stood up from the bedside.

Chaisi remembered looking up, frightened yet faintly hopeful. In that moment, he almost wanted to bow and plead with Uncle Kai—for what, he didn’t know.

Uncle Kai’s expression was placid, as still as a windless lake.

"You don’t need to come back to the Kai Family."

He turned, walked out of the hospital room, and never glanced back at Chaisi again.

Chaisi sat numbly in the hospital corridor.

He sat there for so long that a nurse came to ask him what was wrong. When were his parents coming to get him? Did he want her to call them?

He remembered leaving the hospital carrying a Target plastic bag. Inside was a change of clothes, a few packets of painkillers, half a bottle of mineral water, and a pudding cup left over from a hospital meal.

That was everything Chaisi Monroe had left in the world.

He had to remind himself to hold on to every memory, even the experiences that came after. Only by recovering them completely could he continue to be the same person, carrying the same burden of guilt.

Standing in the darkness, Chaisi couldn’t tell if he had truly left his thirteenth year behind him, or if those months of wandering the streets had really ended.

A drunken middle-aged man looked him up and down for a moment before squatting beside him late one night.

How old are you? Run away from home? Need some money?

I can take you to get something to eat.

As he spoke, his hand reached out and touched Chaisi’s knee.

A few minutes later, the man was on the ground, kicking and howling as he rolled back and forth on the road. His mouth was full of blood, snot and tears streamed down his face, his nasal bone was knocked askew, and a bloody front tooth rolled into a storm drain.

The man, furious and in pain, screamed desperately for help, yelling for someone to call the police. His voice echoed far down the street. Chaisi was still young and panicked instantly. He snatched up his bag, turned, and ran.

’Only later did it occur to him that if he’d been caught, he would have at least had a place to eat and sleep for the next few days.’

How long did he wander the streets? Even Chaisi himself couldn’t remember.

The red plastic bag grew wrinkled and worn, the color scuffed away in white patches.

Chaisi developed an inexplicable loyalty to it.

He carried it with him through streets and alleys, tucking it under the awning of a bus stop to keep it out of the rain, and tying it around his waist while hauling furniture. Oh, that’s right. He later lied about being sixteen and found a day-labor job at a moving company that didn’t check IDs.

Alongside able-bodied movers, Chaisi hauled sofas, lifted tables, and carried TVs... He was drenched in sweat all day but never said a word. There was nothing to say, and besides, he was afraid that if he spoke too much, someone would notice he wasn’t as old as he claimed.

Every day was much the same: collect his pitifully low wages, buy a couple of sandwiches, and sit in the park to eat them while watching the sun sink below the dense canopy of trees.

Central Park had public water fountains and restrooms, and benches to sleep on. It was enough.

In those days, he barely felt any physical hardship.

His mind was in a daze, his consciousness always felt like it was floating just behind his own back, with only base instinct driving his actions. The world moved forward day by day, but he remained frozen in place.

Once, while passing a church, Chaisi stopped.

After a moment, he abandoned the thought and kept walking.

First, if heaven truly existed, it wasn’t a place he was going to, nor a place where he would ever see his mother again.

Second, if there was a God who had orchestrated all of this, Chaisi was determined to kill him.

So for the time being, it seemed the only thing to do was to keep living like this.

He had no watch and no phone. He could only glean the date and time from fragments of the Human World: newspapers at a kiosk, news reports on TVs in shop windows, clocks on walls, a quick glance at someone’s phone, and snippets of conversation.

Later, Chaisi decided that knowing the date was pointless. As long as he could go to work the next day and collect his wages, what did it matter what day it was?

’No need to keep track anymore.’

Thirteen-year-old Chaisi began to realize just how long a lifetime was. Even the length of a single day felt staggering, leaving him disoriented as if waking from a long dream.

Sometimes he would try to convince himself that he had been living like this ever since his mother died; that the Kai Family, Hunters, and private school... were all just a vagrant’s dream.

It was because he had started to avoid keeping track of dates and times that he didn’t know the exact day Uncle Kai found him.

At that moment, he and his coworkers were lifting a large, heavy wooden wardrobe into the back of a truck. Even though he was tall for his age, it was still a difficult, strenuous task for him. His shoulder was burning with pain when a black car pulled into the alley.

When Chaisi looked up, Kai Luonan was just getting out of the car.

For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating.

Kai Luonan looked older than he had a few months ago.

He looked as if he had been trapped for months in a gray-white fog from which he couldn’t escape. His gray-blue eyes were hazy and clouded by it, and more than half of his hair had turned white, with only a few lingering streaks of black remaining.

Kai Luonan glanced around, his gaze sweeping over the truck and the furniture before finally landing on the towel draped over Chaisi’s shoulder.

He let out a soft scoff, a sound that was part self-mockery, part cold sneer.

To this day, Chaisi still doesn’t know why Uncle Kai changed his mind and came back for him.

"...You’ve been doing this all this time?"

Chaisi opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He could only nod.

"Let’s go home."

As Kai Luonan spoke, he had already turned away and opened the car door, as if he still couldn’t bear to look at Chaisi for even a second.

Chaisi didn’t move.

"Wh-why?" he asked, his voice parched. "I..."

"I’ve already lost one son."

Kai Luonan stared at the roof of the black car, not looking back as he said in a low voice, "Why should I lose another?"

"But, Aunt Hai..."

"She doesn’t know."

Kai Luonan kept his gaze fixed across the street, his back to Chaisi. "I only told her that Damian’s Path is what killed him. That is the truth, isn’t it?"

For a long time, Chaisi had felt like he was walking through a dream. But the dream of that day was one he was terrified to be woken from.

Chaisi couldn’t even remember if he’d said a word to his coworkers. He just clutched the plastic bag tightly, his steps unsteady as he dazedly followed Kai Luonan into the car.

The driver turned around and said softly, "Young Master."

On the drive to the Kai Family Mansion, Chaisi sat alone in the back, crying silently the entire way. If Uncle Kai heard his uncontrollable sobs, he gave no sign.

When he stepped back into the mansion, Aunt Hai was sitting alone in the dining room. The sun had already set, and shadows were swallowing the house piece by piece. Not a single lamp was lit in the room.

In front of her was half a bottle of red wine, but no glass.

Chaisi had a feeling it wasn’t the first bottle she’d had that day.

"Damian is dead."

Aunt Hai didn’t turn around. She slurred the words at the mouth of the wine bottle.

Chaisi was frozen to the spot.

"Now you’re his only son... Aren’t you lucky."