Illusion Report

Mai Mingle had been told, "You’re so stupid."

A woman only gets married once in her life. You have to find someone reliable, or what will you do for the rest of your days?

The person who’d advised her like this seemed to be a friend, but Mai Mingle had forgotten who. It must have been someone from decades ago.

Why pick him? Someone had once said, almost mockingly, "He has no masculinity at all, his voice is so soft. If you marry him, who’s going to wear the pants in your family?"

But they didn’t understand.

Whether it was her friends or her parents, they didn’t know that when Mai Mingle chose to marry her husband, her main considerations weren’t "security," "a better life," or "having a safety net for the future"...

It was safety and dignity.

Her husband was quiet and gentle, as if he was always apologetic for his own existence.

Even when he walked into his own home and saw Mai Mingle reading or doing needlework in the living room, he would offer an apologetic smile, as if he felt his living under the same roof with her was an intrusion.

Mai Mingle had never met a man like that before, especially not in that era.

She felt she was a pretty good judge of character. It was as if she’d been born with an antenna that was a little more developed than everyone else’s.

He always dressed neatly and wouldn’t wear a short-sleeved shirt that exposed his arms unless it was sweltering. Whenever something came up, he would sit at the other end of a small table, separated by a desk lamp, and quietly ask for her opinion.

He never ordered Mai Mingle to pour him coffee or clean the ashtray, and he certainly never berated her. When she mentioned a female neighbor being shoved by her husband, her head hitting a cabinet, his face went pale with shock, just like a woman’s.

People always said that for someone as good-looking as Mai Mingle, to dally for so long and end up marrying a man who had no money and was so effeminate, she was truly stupid.

"Ended up"—as if her life was over just because she got married.

A few years into their marriage, Mai Mingle felt she was beginning to understand certain things. She’d probed indirectly a few times, but it led to nothing, and her questions died a quiet death. Besides, in eleven years, no particularly close men had ever appeared in his life—but what if one had? Would she have cared?

She thought not.

Perhaps it had nothing to do with his orientation. He was just that sort of person, someone who didn’t fit society’s definition of a "man."

She and her husband were two people pretending they’d squeezed their way into mainstream society, only to be crushed until they couldn’t breathe. They partnered up to build a tiny unit to face the storms together; like friends, like allies, not like husband and wife.

That was far better than most marriages.

But Mai Mingle still had many questions. She wanted to hear him say why he was always filled with shame and guilt; she wanted to know if he truly wanted a child; she wanted to know who he really was.

But in the end, when all he could manage was a trembling breath from his open mouth, unable to even form a sound, none of it seemed to matter anymore.

She remembered how she had to bend down, press her ear to her husband’s lips, and struggle to discern the shape of his breaths and pauses just to know what he wanted.

One time, he didn’t want anything.

What he said was, "What will you do when you’re alone?"

If their positions were reversed, if he were the one left behind, he would have been terrified. That was just the kind of person he was. That’s why he thought it would be too pitiful, too terrible for Mai Mingle to live in this world alone.

"But I’ve survived on my own all this time. And I don’t just want to keep living, I want to live differently. I want to shed my past life like a snake sheds its skin."

Mai Mingle’s hands began to tremble, but she didn’t loosen her grip in the slightest, driving the knife deep into Mai Mingle’s abdomen.

They were both Mai Mingle, so of course she knew where the "Snake Belt" was on her body; the knife plunged in between the "Snake Belt."

"Do you remember that time?

"I had to work to earn money, take him to the hospital for check-ups and treatments, and then come home to care for him, clean, and cook. I was exhausted every day. I didn’t dare think about the medical bills we owed, and I dared not close my eyes, because if I did, I felt I could sleep until the end of the world.

"He was nearing the end then.

"One time, I knew he was calling for me. He was probably thirsty, right? I think I forgot to refill his water when I left that morning. I knew he was calling me. But I pretended not to hear."

Such a faint, hissing breath—anyone could have easily missed it, so she pretended she hadn’t heard, and her husband would never know the truth.

She remembered that incident for the rest of her life.

"The me who has this memory, the me who would pretend not to hear—I don’t want to bring that person into a second life. What’s the point of holding on to something like that?"

The forty-something Mai Mingle’s voice trembled softly. On the black hilt of the knife and the back of her hand, droplets dripped down one by one.

"The you who remembers this, the you who did such a thing—please just die. I want a clean new beginning."

Mai Mingle couldn’t see clearly anymore.

Blood was still seeping from her temple, blurring a part of her vision. The knife in her abdomen seemed to have carved out a hollow channel, and her strength was constantly draining away through it.

She weakly pawed at Mai Mingle’s hand a few times, not really knowing what she was trying to do—the knife was already in, and pulling it out was pointless now.

Perhaps seeing her collapsed on the floor and thinking she was near death, Mai Mingle finally let go of the knife, stood up straight, and looked down at her, panting heavily.

Mai Mingle forced her eyes open and looked at her forty-something-year-old self. Bathed in the daylight streaming in from the doorway, she stood tall before her, forming a blurry silhouette.

’Wait a minute...’

She herself was actually eighty-six years old, soon to be eighty-seven.

’While fleeing in the simple theater, I hadn’t seen any decrepit, elderly versions of Mai Mingle—it’s as if fifty is the cutoff. Any older, and they’re probably too weak to be of any use.’

’In other words... I’m the oldest of all the Mai Mingles, the one who remembers the most.’

’Is that why every other Mai Mingle wants to kill me?’

She glanced at her hand, lying limply on the floor.

She wasn’t sure if it was because of her blurry vision, but there seemed to be something stuck to her fingers, like a piece of dough, its shape indistinct.

’Wait, is that...’

’In that case, doesn’t that mean—’

Mai Mingle opened her mouth, trying to say something, but burst into a violent coughing fit. Turning her head on the floor, she happened to see a Mai Mingle, no older than thirty, emerge silently from the shadows of a corner.

Just one look at that young face was enough for Mai Mingle to know what past that Mai Mingle wanted to kill.

"Wait,"

she finally called out in a low voice, pushing against the floor with one hand, trying to struggle to her feet. To get up, one has to use their abdominal muscles, but when her muscles contracted, they were blocked by the cold, hard knife. Other than the pain that made her vision go black, she couldn’t move at all.

The Mai Mingle who had attacked her glanced back.

"You’re not dead yet? Well, you will be soon."

As she spoke, this Mai Mingle bent down and forcefully pulled the knife from her abdomen. Over her pained hiss, she said, "I don’t want to see you suffer, either. I’ll give you a quick end."

In the instant that Mai Mingle raised her arm, before the knife could fall, she used all her strength to force herself into a sitting position and lunged—no, "lunged" might be the wrong word. She simply used her own body weight to press forward, grabbing onto that Mai Mingle’s legs in the process.

When she was in her forties, she had injured her foot after a fall while rushing somewhere on a rainy night. Ever since, her ankle had always felt a little stiff, as if she didn’t dare put too much force on it.

Mai Mingle staggered and, sure enough, lost her footing because of the old injury, falling to the ground with a THUD.

Mai Mingle threw herself on top of her. Just as her arms went slack and she collapsed completely onto the other Mai Mingle, she felt a heavy blow to the back of her head.

"What the—"

The forty-something Mai Mingle under her cried out.

In her peripheral vision, the other Mai Mingle seemed shocked that her blow had landed on the nearly-dead Mai Mingle, and she took a few steps back in surprise.

That Mai Mingle looked left and right, then strode toward the audience seats and grabbed another chair.

"What are you doing?" the Mai Mingle under her struggled, shoving a hand against her shoulder. "Let me go! I can protect myself—"

"I understand now,"

Mai Mingle’s voice was now so faint and weak it reminded her of her husband before he died. "It was my fault. Listen to me... I understand everything now."

The Mai Mingle beneath her froze.

The Mai Mingle approaching with the chair also seemed to pause for a moment.

She’d had no children in her life, and for half of it, no family either. But she always felt she had an abundance of love, always ready, always able to ignite and be given away.

She had loved so many things.

The little leather boots that were stolen, the small bird that landed on her windowsill, the gecko that passed by in the summer, the crow she befriended with apples.

Every cat, dog, and goldfish she had ever kept at home; every potted plant that died for reasons she never understood.

Her parents, her husband, her cousin’s daughter, her cousin’s daughter’s children, the old lady next door (how old was Mai Mingle then? Thirty-something, it seemed), the parentless boy from her night class, the young man at the bakery who always gave her a few extra cookies.

She still had endless, abundant love to give to the world; she wanted to embrace every crying, grieving, kind-hearted person and comfort them softly.

But she had never once embraced herself.

Until today.

"Don’t be afraid,"

Mai Mingle held her self from forty-some years ago tightly and comforted her in a low voice, "You want to kill me because I remember you. By that logic, someone will want to kill you, because you remember her.

"But don’t be scared. I will never let you die. I will never resent you."

She closed her eyes, because it felt too tiring to keep them open.

She didn’t know if she had actually spoken the words aloud or if they had only surfaced in her mind.

"Don’t cry. You’re only human. Humans make mistakes, but so what? You have weaknesses, you have times when you’re tired, you have times when you just can’t hold on anymore... and that’s all okay.

"I want to take you, and every version of you that has ever been lost and in pain, into a new life together."