Illusion Report

Kai Luonan had never actually gone through with the formal adoption process.

Legally speaking, Chaisi’s guardian had always been his elderly, taciturn aunt, right up until her death many years later.

Chaisi had just turned sixteen at the time—an age where, as long as no one brought it up, child protective services wouldn’t come looking to make arrangements for him.

After his aunt died, there was no one left in the entire world who cared where Chaisi Monroe was living, who he was with, or how he was doing. And yet—by some miracle he couldn’t comprehend—he ended up having a far more comfortable and privileged upbringing than most.

He’d forgotten how he gradually came to live at the Kai family’s home.

At first, Uncle Kai would visit him from time to time, giving his aunt some money for living expenses. The next year, when it was time for him to start school, Chaisi found himself enrolled in the same private academy as Damian. Everything from his clothes to his schoolbags came in matching sets, and even at his young age, he could tell they were expensive things his mother would have had to work for who-knows-how-long to afford.

Whenever school was out, Chaisi would always travel with the Kai family, go to summer camp, and sign up for horse riding, combat classes, and shooting practice... He had his own room in the Kai house and was never short on spending money. Even the maid, who only came four days a week, knew his tastes and preferences clearly.

Slowly, he started spending more and more time at the Kai residence until, at some point in elementary school, he stopped going back to his aunt’s place altogether.

His aunt would come to see him at first, but later that turned into a phone call every few months.

Their last interaction was at her funeral, where Chaisi stood to give a eulogy, only to realize that to him, she was almost a complete stranger.

His entire childhood, right up until he was thirteen, felt like a dream.

It was as if his mother had known all along that he would only have a good life after she was gone, which was why she had deliberately placed him in Kai Luonan’s hands before she died.

Chaisi used to think that what his mother had entrusted to Uncle Kai wasn’t just him, but a part of herself as well. It was as if the part of her that was a mother had been taken in by Kai Luonan along with him.

Having been raised by the Kai family for nearly twenty years, Chaisi had never felt that Aunt Hai was like a mother to him. To develop a mother-son bond with any other woman would have felt like a betrayal of Daiju Monroe. And so, Uncle Kai, by himself, became both his father and his mother.

Of course, he never showed these feelings, especially not in front of Aunt Hai and Damian. He was always extra careful around them.

Kai Luonan could call him "son," but Chaisi could not call him "father."

That’s just how things were in the world.

"...Do you remember? Back then, the Kai Family Faction had already grown to a decent size, so I rarely entered the Nests myself anymore. I always took you boys traveling with me..."

While he was trapped deep in the Black Abyss Belt, the man who would never truly be his father was still there, pulling him out word by word, his voice a lifeline.

’How could I ever forget?’

Those were the best times of his life, times he would never have again.

Before he was thirteen, Chaisi had gone with Uncle Kai to the West Coast several times, to the rugged coastal mountains and the interstate deserts.

Between March and September is the best season for seeing the Milky Way in the Northern Hemisphere.

He had sat deep in the mountains, smelling the earthy scent of the forest. He had lain in the desert, feeling the fine sand he could never quite shake out, caught between his toes and in his shoes, both coarse and light.

Uncle Kai would talk about the universe and the constellations, and Aunt Hai would laugh from time to time. The family would lie together under the inky black sky, gazing at the billions of brilliant stars that stretched from right before their eyes to the distant horizon.

Under a starry sky like that, Chaisi could temporarily forget that his future had already been decided.

Uncle Kai had told him that one of the best places to see the Milky Way was in central Australia. Chaisi would imagine that maybe, when he grew up, he too could cross distant continents and oceans, spending his life chasing the river of stars.

But Chaisi knew very well that there was only one path for him when he grew up: to become a Hunter for the Kai family.

"...I have no complaints."

Chaisi whispered to the darkness, "I just never thought that the one and only thing I was destined to do in this life was something I couldn’t accomplish."

Damian used to get sick of the repetitive Path tests, declaring he would never become a Hunter; he wanted to be a painter.

Two years later, he became obsessed with movies, so Aunt Hai bought him a camera. He would film "action sequences" during their combat training sessions and even made Chaisi wear the child-sized suit the family had custom-made for formal occasions, because it made it look more like a "spy movie."

Chaisi was the complete opposite.

He never once entertained the thought of not being a Hunter, because he knew he didn’t have a choice. In the end, he would always be the one wearing a suit and leather shoes to combat training.

But the Path tests, which had started when they were six and seven, went on for years. By the time one was thirteen and the other twelve, they still showed no hope of opening a Path. With each passing day, Chaisi’s torment deepened.

He felt as if he had told Uncle Kai a colossal lie, as if he were an impostor who had snuck in to steal from the Kai family, a fraud who deserved to be thrown out at any moment.

Yes, by then, Chaisi’s sole focus on becoming a Hunter was no longer about avenging his mother.

Having been immersed in the Kai family’s world, he now had a deep understanding of the Nests. Seeking revenge on a denizen was far too unrealistic—he didn’t even know if it was still alive or where to begin looking. Revenge had long since faded into a hollow fantasy.

Other children—like Damian—got to have parents just by being born and opening their eyes. But not Chaisi.

He had to grow taller, run faster, be stronger, think smarter, react quicker... He had to become the best Hunter, only then could he earn the right to have parents.

If there was a God, he was surely a sadistic, malicious tormentor.

Why grant his mother that kind of Path, but give him nothing at all?

...Without even a Path, what use was he?

But Damian was ecstatic about it.

"It’s better not to have a Path!"

Damian, only twelve at the time, possessed a cynical wisdom most children lacked. "If you have a Path, you’re just selling your life away. Who knows if you’ll even come back from the next mission? I don’t want to be a Hunter, and my mom doesn’t want me to be one either. The Family Faction has plenty of Hunters; they don’t need the two of us. We pay them to go into the Nests, that’s their job. Don’t worry. You’re like a brother to me. There will always be a place for you with the Kai family."

If you hold on to one fragment of memory and focus on it, more fragments will slowly come back—even experiences Uncle Kai knew nothing about returned to Chaisi, piece by piece.

Damian was probably trying to comfort him, because he added with a laugh, "You know, in this whole family, I’m the only one who thinks of you as a real brother. So you’d better stick with me, okay?"

After that, Chaisi began secretly searching for a Path on his own, whenever no one was watching.

He fell out of trees. He held his breath underwater until he was dizzy and seeing stars. He skipped across crosswalks amidst roaring traffic, first stepping only on the odd-numbered lines, then the even-numbered ones, earning countless angry shouts.

Chaisi borrowed a motorcycle from a Household Hunter and drove it straight into the wall of an abandoned warehouse, only to end up in the hospital for a while. He spent an entire day watching horror movies, crime documentaries, and underground gore films until he passed out from exhaustion. He certainly had plenty of nightmares, but none of them led him to a Nest.

’I wonder if I cut my flesh open, would I be able to see any trace of the Path?’

He looked at his own hands, thinking.

After several months of these desperate, secret experiments, Chaisi took a temporary break as Thanksgiving approached.

Aunt Hai placed great importance on holidays. As the end of the year neared, he had to appear clean and unscathed for family dinners and the Christmas card photo—he couldn’t very well show up to major events looking black and blue.

Damian thought not having a Path was a stroke of good luck.

Chaisi had stolen that good luck from him, whether he wanted to or not.

The date was November eighteenth.

It was the second to last day of Damian’s life.

Chaisi couldn’t remember why he was so tired that day, only that he had gone to bed early. But after sleeping for just two or three hours, his eyes suddenly snapped open in the dead of night.

Chaisi sat up without a sound.

He stared at his bedroom door, muscles tensed. One hand crept to the nightstand, gripping the heavy base of the table lamp.

Although he had used all sorts of weapons in training, Uncle Kai didn’t allow them in the children’s rooms. Chaisi had never imagined he would need a weapon in his own home.

The bedroom door stood silently in the gloom.

He didn’t know what had woken him.

He waited warily for a few seconds before someone knocked lightly on the door twice.

"...Who is it?" Chaisi asked in a low voice.

"Chaisi, are you still awake?"

It was Damian outside the door.

He sounded a little different than usual—excited, confused, or maybe dazed. His tone was almost like... like that of a much younger child who didn’t know what to do.

"Come out, quickly. And be quiet," Damian said in a hushed, urgent voice. "Don’t let Mom and Dad find out... I have to show you something."

"What is it?"

Chaisi had already loosened his grip on the lamp. Before he even finished asking the question, his body was already moving out of habit, and he got out of bed.

"I was just messing around in my room... and I don’t know how, but all of a sudden... I-I think I opened a Path."

Chaisi froze in the darkness.

He had never hated someone as much as he did in that moment.