Illusion Report

Muffled by the glass, the dull howls continued for nearly half a minute before gradually dying down behind the door.

Mai Mingle stood on the sidewalk, keeping a distance of three or four steps from the entrance of Tourist Information Center #07, staring at it intently.

One moment, half a flattened face would appear on the glass door; the next, it was Li Stan’s shoulder ramming into it. A flesh-colored fist flashed against the glass again and again, surely making a tremendous racket—but the glass door remained serene and calm. It was as if the two sides of the glass belonged to different worlds, unable to share vibrations or sounds.

Aside from Li Stan’s indistinct howls, Mai Mingle couldn’t hear any vibrations, not even when a dense barrage of bullets struck the glass.

For that half a minute, she could hardly move her feet. It wasn’t because she was afraid.

Nest residents could perhaps disguise themselves as people—the information the Nest had drilled into her head mentioned a type of resident called a Vulture, which could seamlessly take on a human appearance. But Nest residents had a hard time replicating industrial products, like cell phones, fluorescent orange tags, or handguns that could fire bullets.

’So the person inside is probably Li Stan himself, not a Nest resident in disguise...’

’He must have broken a rule, entered the Tourist Information Center, and now he can’t get out.’

He was so young, looking no older than thirty.

Could she still save him? Mai Mingle didn’t know.

Everything on this street was enticing her to open the door. If she actually did, she didn’t know if Li Stan could be saved, but she herself would almost certainly be lost.

"If... if you’re still alive, just hang on a little longer. Wait for me," Mai Mingle whispered. "Wait for me to figure out the consequences of opening the door... Maybe there’s a loophole."

’Maybe there’s a way.’

She took a deep breath, trying to sort through her thoughts.

The rules poster said not to enter the "Tourist Information Center." That probably meant not to enter the "real Tourist Information Center"—just like the rule about not turning your back on the Tourist Information Center’s entrance.

If you turned your back on an entrance that wasn’t the real one, nothing happened. She and Emily had just experienced that firsthand.

Li Stan entered Information Center #07 and something happened to him... Could this prove, by reverse logic, that #07 was the real one?

’No, there’s another possibility.’

’Tourist Information Center #07 isn’t the real one either, but it still trapped Li Stan—maybe even killed him—just to make everyone else misunderstand and think it’s the real one, and then open its door.’

After all, the rules only said not to go inside; they didn’t say not to open the door. Setting aside a rescue, even if you just wanted to find clues inside the Tourist Information Center, there was a huge difference between opening the door and not—even if you didn’t step inside.

Every door on this street was doing everything it could to make someone open it.

What would happen after opening these doors? What would come out?

Mai Mingle couldn’t come up with a clear answer, but that indescribable sense of disharmony surfaced again, and she couldn’t suppress it.

Perhaps because her mind was in turmoil, it wasn’t until a few minutes later that Mai Mingle suddenly realized the street seemed too quiet... unnaturally quiet.

Something that should have happened hadn’t.

She slowly raised her head. At the end of the street, Emily was still crouching in the same spot, her head turned, staring motionlessly at the same crack.

If anything was different, it was that Emily had stuck one of her hands into the crack. The black fissure had swallowed it all the way up to her shoulder.

She hadn’t stood up, hadn’t asked any questions, let alone come over to see what was happening—the street wasn’t even that long. Yet it was as if she hadn’t heard Li Stan’s screams at all.

Emily’s hair was splayed across her blue hoodie. The long, black strands undulated, crawling over the hood and cascading down her back.

...Something was different.

Something was wrong.

Mai Mingle thought for a few seconds where she stood, then started walking as quietly as she could back toward the end of the street, toward the intersection.

Li Stan was leaning against the glass door of #07, banging the back of his head against it again and again, muttering indistinctly, "What do I do? There’s no back door, no ventilation ducts, not a single window I can break. I want out so badly... Let me think... Oh, if only I could turn myself into a liquid, then I could flow out through the crack under the door. I’ve always thought the human body was poorly designed anyway, so why not—wait."

Mai Mingle didn’t even dare to breathe too loudly. She only snuck a quick glance at his back.

’For now, at least, his back still looks human.’

"Wait... what am I saying... Humans can’t turn into liquid... My name is Li Stan. I’m a human, a Hunter, and I live in the Queen District of Blackmoor City..."

Mai Mingle quickened her pace, walking past Tourist Information Center #07.

She had to figure out what was going on with this street and the "Tourist Information Centers"—before it was too late.

She once again passed the upside-down room in the wall crack (the sounds were gone) and the poster of Emily. She walked all the way to the intersection, then carefully crossed halfway into the street. Standing in the middle of the road, she craned her neck, trying to get a better look at Emily.

The next second, Emily abruptly turned her head toward Mai Mingle.

Mai Mingle involuntarily jumped back a step.

"What’s wrong?" Emily raised an eyebrow, but otherwise, her face remained impassive. "Are you looking at me?"

Her features, her tone, her expression—they were all exactly the same as before.

...Including her tight ponytail that pulled at her scalp, her light brown hair slicked back perfectly without a single strand out of place.

"I... I wanted to see what you found," Mai Mingle said, her throat dry.

Emily slowly pulled her hand out of the deep black crack. For a moment, Mai Mingle thought she would just keep pulling her arm out, that the arm would be endless, the wrist never appearing.

Thankfully, it was just her being paranoid.

Emily pulled out her hand, a cell phone clutched in it. She glanced at the screen before looking up. "I wanted to see what was going on inside."

"So you... you just stuck your hand in?"

"The rules didn’t say we couldn’t stick our hands in, did they?" Emily shrugged. "I felt like something was moving in the crack, but I couldn’t see clearly, so I put my phone in to record a video."

’...Huh? The phone can record video?’

’Hai Luwei must have overlooked something; they never taught me to use the phone to record. Wait, that’s not the point.’

Three questions jostled for position, trying to climb out of Mai Mingle’s throat: "What did you record?", "Didn’t you hear Li Stan’s screams?", and "What’s going on with your back?" In the end, they all got stuck, and she couldn’t ask a single one.

Emily lit up the phone’s screen and said, "Look."

Mai Mingle was still standing in the street, quite a distance away. She hesitated, then mustered her courage and approached—stopping when she was still four or five steps from Emily.

The screen was pitch-black, and she could only vaguely make out that the walls of the crack were very smooth. In the dim depths, a shadow suddenly stirred with a RUSTLE.

"Who... who’s there?"

A small voice came from deep within the crack, recorded by the phone and now playing back. The voice was unfamiliar, filled with terror.

Emily seemed surprised too. "Huh? I didn’t hear anything when I was recording."

"When you were recording, you didn’t hear *anything*? Not just this voice, but on the street—"

Before Mai Mingle could finish her question, the small voice from the phone sounded again.

"I’m a Hunter. The Nest got me. Where am I? Can anyone save me? I have to keep looking for the rules, keep looking for the rules... but the rules on this street are completely unfair, they’re too weird—"

The next moment, Emily’s voice came from the phone: "What’s wrong? Are you looking at me?"

Then the dim image on the screen swayed and gradually brightened as she pulled the phone out of the crack.

"It mentioned the rules, right?"

Emily glanced at Mai Mingle, then tapped the phone. "I’ll keep recording, see what else it says. If I’d known it was recording audio, I wouldn’t have taken the phone out."

It sounded like she was blaming Mai Mingle for her bad timing.

’...She seems completely normal. Could I have been seeing things just now?’

Mai Mingle wasn’t even sure what she said herself. She seemed to agree about checking again and walked away from Emily—after all, the first rule was not to walk with acquaintances, and she didn’t dare get too close to Emily.

Once she was back across the street, she turned to look again.

Emily’s black hair was even longer now, winding down her back like vines.

’...I have a feeling that the more time passes, the more irreversible the situation will become.’

The location of Annie’s Warehouse, the lives of these two young people—Mai Mingle wanted to secure them both, to save them both. ’Am I being too greedy?’

This time, her steps were hurried, and her gaze darted around rapidly. She scanned not only the distorted "Tourist Information Centers," but also the street, the sky, and the power lines—though she couldn’t have said what she was actually looking for.

It was only when she found it that she realized what her target had been.

A yellow rules poster, its top half torn off, had been crumpled into a ball and carelessly stuffed into the top of an already full trash can. The word "door" peeking out from a corner instantly caught Mai Mingle’s attention.

When she smoothed it out, the torn edge of the rules poster perfectly matched the half-poster in her phone’s photo. However, the very bottom section of the crumpled poster had also been torn off.

’So one rules poster was torn into at least three pieces and hidden in different places?’

No wonder that voice had said it was so unfair.

3. If you see someone you know in a play (or on a performance poster), no, you do not know him/her/it.

4. You may sometimes receive a call for help from inside a Tourist Information Center.

Do not act on your own. Ask him/her/it, "Have you called the police?"

If the other party answers, "I’ve already called the police," leave immediately.

If the other party gives any answer other than "I’ve already called the police," do not believe that the next action he/she/it asks you to take is harmless.

5. You must adhere to the rules on this warning poster. Do not trust any other codes of conduct.

Mai Mingle had wanted to show this rules poster to Emily and then ask Li Stan if he had called the police—she thought it might be a way to test if he was still alive—but she didn’t move.

That feeling of strangeness was growing stronger and stronger, becoming impossible to ignore... especially after seeing the second piece of the poster.

If she didn’t get to the bottom of it soon, she feared she would make a terrible mistake.