Illusion Report

So many Mai Mingles. Where did they all come from?

The question from a few minutes ago now had an answer so clear and simple it didn’t even need to be asked. All these Mai Mingles, of course, came from Mai Mingle’s own life.

She had lived an ordinary life.

Perhaps because of that ordinariness, the sharpest, most destructive aggression she had ever known was mostly directed at herself.

It might sound strange, but Mai Mingle felt a dazed sense of familiarity in being chased, besieged, whipped, and stabbed by herself. None of this felt new.

She had long since lost the will to continue.

When Mai Mingle opened her eyes, she found herself lying face down on the floor. There was nothing beneath her but a thin layer of dust and footprints.

The other Mai Mingle, the one in her forties, was gone. ’Maybe she went to kill the next Mai Mingle.’

’Did I pass out just now?’

Mai Mingle lowered her gaze to her hands.

They were still the hands of her prime—full, strong, clean, and smooth. The blurred outline of her fingers she’d glimpsed a moment ago must have been a trick of the eyes, a hallucination brought on by her severe injuries.

’Did the other Mai Mingles think I was dead, and that’s why they let—’

The thought didn’t have time to finish. Something heavy slammed into the back of her head again. In that instant, it felt as if her thoughts, her soul, and her vision were all knocked clean out of her body.

Mai Mingle struggled to turn over. Through her swimming vision, she could vaguely make out a younger Mai Mingle standing before her.

"Wait..."

she cried out hoarsely, raising a hand as if that could stop the other her. She scrambled backward, her voice dropping to a desperate plea. "I know, I know why you want to kill me. But listen to me... that incident wasn’t your fault."

An expression appeared on the other Mai Mingle’s face that she had never seen before.

But even without ever having seen it in a mirror, she instantly understood the feeling behind it—the half-lidded eyes, the twisted lips, as if fighting back the urge to vomit. After all, she had been tormented by that same feeling countless times in the dead of night.

"It wasn’t your fault,"

Mai Mingle, with a sudden burst of strength, sat up and grabbed the other Mai Mingle’s hand—the one not holding the club.

"Being deceived when you were so young, at your most vulnerable and confused—that was a misfortune, not something disgusting. You are not disgusting—"

She didn’t get to finish. A black shadow suddenly shot into her peripheral vision, whistling just over her head with an unprecedentedly heavy gust of wind. With a THUD, a fire axe bit deep into the floorboards. The air exploded outward like shattered bone fragments.

Mai Mingle stared blankly at the fire axe, then turned her head to look at another Mai Mingle standing in the audience seats in the distance.

’If her aim hadn’t been off by a hair, I would have died right here...’

She wouldn’t lay a hand on her past self, but if she didn’t want to die, she had to end this, and fast. ’But how do I end it?’

Mai Mingle instinctively scrambled to her feet and stumbled away, toward the other side of the theater. Every movement was a decision made by her body’s survival instinct; her mind was still a complete mess.

The other Mai Mingle shook the hand that had been grabbed and then released, as if trying to fling off some unpleasant sensation, and chased after her, club in hand.

Another Mai Mingle kicked and swept aside the chairs blocking her path, charging toward the fleeing Mai Mingle from the other end of the theater.

Mai Mingle swept her gaze across the theater—once an old warehouse—and saw at least four or five Mai Mingles, all rushing toward her. But the one in her forties, the one she had held so tightly, was no longer among them, not in the theater. She had vanished without a trace.

’...How did she disappear? Where did she go?’

Mai Mingle didn’t dare look down at the wound on her abdomen. The fact that she could still stand and run was nothing short of a miracle.

Struck by waves of lightheadedness and vertigo, she stumbled forward, bracing herself against the walls and chairs. She left wet, bloody handprints on the white walls and seatbacks she touched. For some reason, the prints were swollen and oversized—

Wait.

She had already run past, but she forced herself to a halt and twisted her head around. She looked at the wall, then back at her own palm.

’It wasn’t a hallucination from my injuries...’

Her right hand, the one that had just grabbed the other Mai Mingle, now had a fuzzy, indistinct outline, as if two hands were imperfectly superimposed on each other. It made her right hand look a size larger than usual.

’What’s going on?’

It was as if... as if "another hand" had become attached to her own.

Mai Mingle turned back around. The Mai Mingle with the club was only a few meters away.

She averted her gaze and scanned the theater.

The forty-something Mai Mingle was gone.

A younger Mai Mingle was charging at her.

The closest Mai Mingle raised her club high. Her other hand, the one not holding the club, also seemed blurry and indistinct.

’...So that’s how it is?’

’If the Nest can make past Mai Mingles fall down one by one, can it also make them return to "me" one by one?’

She spun around. Instead of running or dodging, she charged toward the young Mai Mingle.

If she took another blow to the head, she would probably lose consciousness. Her end would be certain.

She knew she was crying, but she also knew her tears weren’t because she might die.

It was because she knew why that other Mai Mingle was so desperate to crush and erase her.

Perhaps there were women in the world who had never been toyed with or treated like objects in their lives, but Mai Mingle had yet to meet one.

’Why was I so ignorant? Why was I so trusting? Why was I so stupid?’

’Why am I so disgusting?’

"It’s not your fault."

As if slipping through a miraculous crack in space, Mai Mingle dodged the club and grabbed the other Mai Mingle’s hand once more.

The wound had healed, leaving a hard, uneven scar. It was like the solidified cry of a wound; once released again, the pain was like being beaten relentlessly with a club.

But it was still a part of her flesh and blood, a mark of her struggle to survive, proof that she had made it through.

"Thank you," she repeated in a low voice. "Thank you for holding on and becoming me."

By the time Mai Mingle heard footsteps behind her, the space before her was already empty.

’...It worked. I really can make every Mai Mingle go back where she belongs.’

She didn’t have time to turn and see which version of Mai Mingle was attacking her this time. An idea was already forming in her mind.

’Did this theater lie to me from the very beginning?’

’Did it hide the path to survival inside a trap?’

Perhaps it was hope, but she felt the pain in her body begin to fade. Mai Mingle hurried through the audience seats, dodged an attack from another Mai Mingle, and bounded up the side steps onto the stage, taking them two or three at a time.

The moment her foot hit the wooden stage floor, she looked back and saw several Mai Mingles crowding the stairs, scrambling to get up.

In the center of the stage, the supply bag and the orange tag were bathed in a pillar of pure white light.

Just as Mai Mingle dove for the supply bag, several Mai Mingles behind her lunged onto her back, crushing her—and the chair she knocked over—to the ground.

’...Am I going to die at the final step?’

For a moment, her vision flickered between light and dark, filled with shadows and limbs, her mind unable to keep up with the chaos. Mai Mingle grabbed the supply bag, curled into a ball, and, crushed beneath the weight of her past life, shouted, "I’ve got it!"

Not daring to pause even for a second to see their reaction, she immediately yelled again, "I was always the last one, wasn’t I?"

The attacks she expected to rain down on her never came.

"Every one of them is a former me. I went from one Mai Mingle to the next, step by step, to get where I am today. Without their tenacious will to survive, the me of today wouldn’t exist. So the me of right now was always the ’last’ Mai Mingle... You lied to me. I never had to kill my past selves, did I?"

After her voice faded, a dead silence took over. She couldn’t even hear the breathing of the other Mai Mingles.

She slowly opened her eyes—Mai Mingle hadn’t even realized she had closed them.

The stage was empty. There was only herself, the supply bag, the tag, and an overturned chair.

’Where are the Mai Mingles?’

She scrambled up and looked around, bewildered.

Once she was sitting up straight, Mai Mingle suddenly realized her movements were a little too agile, too easy. She looked down and saw a long tear in her clothes.

But only the clothes were torn. Slipping a hand inside, she could feel the smooth skin of her abdomen between the wraps of the Snake Belt. It was as if she had never been stabbed at all.

The gash on her temple was gone, and there was no swelling on the back of her head.

The black speaker hanging from the ceiling slowly elongated, drooping to the floor. Suddenly, it began scuttling toward her on all fours with a SCRITCH-SCRITCH sound.

The speaker squatted in front of Mai Mingle and chuckled, "PFFT PFFT."

"It’s more than just ’not having to’ kill them..."

"What?"

The speaker was busy keeping its black outer casing in place, preventing it from slipping off. In other words, it was maintaining its appearance as a speaker.

"How did you solve the puzzle? Tell me your thought process. Did I reveal too many clues somewhere, letting you find the solution?"

Mai Mingle stared blankly at the speaker, which was trying its best to convince her it was a speaker with its appearance.

"You were the 29th person to enter the theater, and the first to survive."

’...What?’

"Never mind killing all your other selves—even killing just one would have given you a fatal wound that you couldn’t see or feel at the time."

The speaker buzzed. "If you inflict a wound on yourself, of course the wound ends up on you. Isn’t that the simplest logic in the world? If you kill yourself, you get killed. It’s so obvious, but the other 28 people didn’t get it. It’s killing me!"

’So that’s how it was.’ She hadn’t harmed a single one of her other selves... which was why she herself was completely unharmed.

"It’s a trap," Mai Mingle murmured.

"What else did you think?" the speaker said. "Did you really think you could kill off your past selves one by one just because you don’t like them, and your present self would still get to live?"

"So... everyone else died?" Mai Mingle asked.

"Depends on your definition of death, hahaha."

"What do you mean?"

The speaker shifted its body, as if readjusting the front half of its casing that was about to slip off. "Well, if you count it as ’not dead’ so long as there’s a living person left at the end who looks exactly the same as before and can move and talk, then yes, there were a few clever ones like that. After all, not every game is exactly the same."

"...Looks?"

The speaker’s face crumpled into a grin. "Because... only their looks are the same now."

Mai Mingle hung the orange tag around her neck. Even though she wasn’t injured, and even though she knew she should get away from this speaker-like thing as quickly as possible, she couldn’t summon the strength.

"Maybe I shouldn’t have said ’the last one’? Oh dear, how should I phrase it next time..."

As the speaker muttered to itself, Mai Mingle lowered her head and slowly wiped her face.

"Maybe I should thank you."

The speaker paused. "What? Shut up."

"No, I really should thank you... I’ve never felt so at peace, so eager for a new beginning, as I do right now."