Illusion Report

Fortunately, to everyone else, Mai Mingle’s head was just a carved wooden door with an inlaid mirror.

No matter what face she made, as long as she was quiet, Robert wouldn’t notice her reaction—which saved her a lot of embarrassment and fury.

Mai Mingle bit the inside of her cheek, pressing her lips together tightly. She kept her head level, only letting her eyelids droop from time to time to steal a glance.

She couldn’t stop herself from looking. Honestly, who could?

’How was she supposed to describe this feeling? In her entire life, she’d never encountered anything like this...’

When she followed Suo Beihua down the stairs and first caught sight of Robert sitting on the landing, Mai Mingle was simply startled.

All of Robert’s skin visible outside his clothes had turned into flesh-colored plastic, making him look like Barbie’s boyfriend—what’s-his-name? His limbs and cheeks looked stiff and slow. It was a little scary, but not yet absurd.

It was only when he finally, hesitantly, stood up that Mai Mingle quickly choked back a gasp.

Robert’s fly was open—because it had to be.

A silver, metallic, rotating handle, shaped like a large key, protruded from his open fly. Mai Mingle recognized it at once: it was a wind-up key.

As for what the wind-up key had replaced... the answer was almost screamingly obvious.

’...What’s the meaning of this?’

’Why would you install a wind-up key *there*?’

’Suo Beihua told him to move as little as possible earlier. Was that because... Wait, no. It can’t be, can it?’

Robert opened his mouth. It was a separate, articulated piece. When he spoke, a square black gap opened on his plastic face, the plastic mouth moving up and down to open and close.

"Great, another one trapped. How do we get out of here? Any ideas?" Robert asked. He seemed determined to pretend the wind-up key didn’t exist.

"Actually, after seeing Mai Mingle, I do have an idea."

Suo Beihua glanced at her phone. "We only have six or seven minutes left. Realistically speaking, I think we’ve all failed this interview. Can we all accept that? It’s practically impossible to find a miraculous breakthrough and escape in such a short amount of time. It would be better to conserve our strength and focus on staying safe."

Robert grunted, clearly displeased.

Suo Beihua glanced at Mai Mingle, as if waiting for her opinion.

"...No. If there are six or seven minutes left, I think I should keep trying for another six or seven minutes," Mai Mingle said quietly. "It can’t hurt to consider our next move after time is up and our failure is confirmed, right? It’s just a matter of six or seven minutes."

’If she was just going to give up ahead of time because things looked bad, then what was the point of having a second life?’

She had done that enough in her first eighty-six years. Sometimes circumstances had forced her hand; other times, she had simply surrendered.

’Thinking about it later always left an unsatisfying, unpleasant feeling of dejection that made her avoid the memory. If she could just fight with everything she had until the very last second, perhaps she wouldn’t mind looking back on a simple failure...’

"You’re very likely right," Mai Mingle said to Suo Beihua, as if to comfort her. "I don’t have any unrealistic fantasies, either. But I still want to push as far as I’m supposed to."

Suo Beihua was silent for a few seconds and seemed to size her up—but all there was to see was a wooden door with a mirror.

"I was originally thinking that we should stay put and try to ask the Kai Family for help. For example," she said, pointing to her phone and launching into a string of incomprehensible jargon, "I just did a scan. Even though there’s no cell signal in the Nest, there are at least four Bluetooth signals nearby. Even if we exclude you two, one of them might belong to someone from the Kai Family. Maybe if I can pair with them, I can ask for help."

’I recognize every word, but put together, they’re harder to understand than the Residents.’

"Then hurry up and try," Robert said, sweeping his gaze over Mai Mingle. His eyes fell from the mirrored door to her chest before he looked away. "As for her, if she wants to keep looking for an exit, let her. We’ll each do our own thing. Simple. Whichever one of us... makes... pro... gress... fir... wait..."

Mai Mingle stared at him in disbelief.

Robert slowly reached his hand down. Suo Beihua immediately looked away.

He grabbed the wind-up key sticking out of his fly and began to turn it, little by little. The key slowly cranked out a clear "CLICK... CLICK..." sound from deep within.

’So that *is* how the wind-up key is used.’

He had to constantly wind the key in his crotch to get the power he needed to stand, walk, talk, and do anything at all.

’These forms everyone’s turned into... they’re not based on our individual characteristics, are they?’

"Are you needing to wind that key more often?" Suo Beihua asked coldly.

Robert ignored her and straightened his plastic body.

"Well, go look," he said to Mai Mingle, his tone practically a command. "There wasn’t much time to begin with. If the interview can—"

"Who’s up there?"

The shout, echoing up out of nowhere, made them all jump.

"...Li Stan?"

Mai Mingle was the first to recognize the voice. Leaning over the railing and peering down, she called out, "Is that you? It’s Mai Mingle! All three of us are up here."

"It’s me! So you guys aren’t out yet either? I’m with Emily," Li Stan shouted back. "You haven’t found an exit either?"

"Well, so much for anyone passing the interview," Suo Beihua muttered.

With five people crowded into the narrow concrete stairwell—especially after their transformations, with Suo Beihua dragging a snake tail more than two meters long—it was hard not to worry about accidentally flipping over the railing and plunging into the unseen depths below.

Li Stan was covered head to toe in antennae.

’He was a man, so I guess it was a small mercy he didn’t also get a wind-up key.’

To be honest, he now looked a bit like a humanoid hedgehog that had just been horribly tortured. Countless silver-white antennae sprouted from his skin, densely packed and reaching into the air. Whenever someone spoke or moved, the antennae would sway like seaweed in a current, as if trying to locate the source of the disturbance.

His features were almost completely obscured. Short antennae even poked out from his lips. A single glance was enough to make your scalp tingle and your own skin ache in sympathy for him.

Not only did Li Stan not seem to be in pain, he even offered his own analysis: "Ah, maybe it’s because I have an unusually high awareness of danger?"

As for Emily, if you weren’t told it was her, you’d never guess she was a person.

"...Have you ever played *Plants vs. Zombies*?"

Li Stan patted Emily’s... shoulder. Let’s just call it a shoulder, for argument’s sake. It was impossible to tell what part of her it actually was.

"You haven’t? For real? Huh, well, the game is a little old now. Anyway, there’s a super-tough nut in it that the zombies can’t bite through. She’s exactly like that."

Mai Mingle felt that sometimes, the world of young people was even more baffling than the Nest.

The Emily-nut let out a "harrumph" from her nose, but no one knew if it was a reaction to Li Stan or because she had seen Robert. That enormous, aloof, hard-shelled macadamia nut (or was it a walnut?), was inching away from Robert, its shell scraping against the concrete wall with a RUSTLE.

Suo Beihua took a deep breath and rubbed her face vigorously.

"Four Bluetooth signals... I guess that means everyone’s here?" she said, tapping her phone screen. "No wonder I couldn’t get in touch with the Kai Family Hunters outside. Calling for help is out. Until they come in to rescue us, our only option is to keep looking for an exit."

Since they were going to keep searching for an exit, they needed to gather as much information as possible.

"When did you two get into the stairwell?" Robert demanded. "How come we didn’t hear a door open?"

"Just now," Li Stan said, also pretending the wind-up key didn’t exist. "I cleared the puzzle on the second floor—"

"The second floor?" Suo Beihua faltered. "I was on the second floor, too."

A brief silence passed between them.

"...I came from the third floor," Mai Mingle offered.

The words were barely out of her mouth when Robert and Emily said in unison, "Me too."

They all looked at each other, and for a moment, no one seemed to know what to make of this information.

Mai Mingle was certain that on the third floor—at least, the third floor she had been on—she had been completely alone.

In her search for an exit, she had meticulously checked every inch of the place, even pressing her ear to the walls and floor. If there had been any movement just a wall away, she should have been able to sense it.

When she was neither speaking nor moving, it felt as if she had been sealed in a concrete coffin and buried underground. That kind of deathly, despairing silence couldn’t possibly have been because the person next door was simply moving quietly.

"The only way we have of identifying which floor we’re on is by the number on the door."

Suo Beihua frowned and said in a low voice, "...If the door numbers have nothing to do with the actual floor levels, then we could have come from any one of these infinite floors. In other words, this place is filled with countless third floors and second floors."