Illusion Report

Mai Mingle grabbed a pen from the table. Spread out before her were three notebooks, an employee roster, and several blank sheets of A4 paper.

The JL Toy Company employees must have already tried shouting "I found you!" everywhere, hoping to bluff Jones into revealing itself.

In their long, desperate, and fruitless search, they had probably tried every method they could think of—Mai Mingle even found a short prayer written on one sheet of paper.

’...It must have been Laura, right? It seems she was the only religious one.’

And yet, she was the first one to disappear.

In other words, Jones wouldn’t reveal itself unless the searcher was one hundred percent certain—staring right at "Jones" with their own eyes as they declared it found.

"...So, the first step to finding you is to tell you how I know where you’re hiding. Only by following a line of thought and analysis to a single, final conclusion will you believe that I’ve genuinely found you, and that I’m not just bluffing."

Mai Mingle listened as her own voice fell and faded into the silence. Though she knew no one would answer, she added, "Right?"

She opened the first notebook and said, "Alright, let’s begin. I think I’ll start with the trap you set."

The conference room was dead silent. Just beyond the door, a child’s doll tilted its head, gazing vacantly into the room.

"Your hiding place is already unimaginably difficult to find, yet you still left a misleading ’red herring.’ You wanted to trap the minds of those who came after, ensuring they failed, one after another."

"That trap is this: ’Jones is hiding among the last six people.’"

Her initial misunderstanding stemmed from a very simple fact.

This is what was written in the first notebook:

2. There were a total of six people in the weekly meeting.

We printed out photos of all the employees and posted them on the wall. We put a red X over the ones who went missing.

Since no one could remember what Jones looked like, we had to use the process of elimination.

However, when Mai Mingle turned around, she saw that fifteen of the photos on the wall had red X’s on them.

"Twenty employees in total. Fifteen missing. And yet there were six people left for the weekly meeting? Considering Jones can alter people’s perception to the point that they can’t even tell it’s not their colleague when face-to-face, it’s highly likely that one of the final six is Jones. That line of thinking is perfectly reasonable, isn’t it?"

"What’s more, the last group of employees turned the third floor upside down and didn’t find Jones anywhere. That seems to further support the idea that Jones had infiltrated their group."

Mai Mingle sighed.

"To be honest, at first, I was also wondering which of the six was Jones... I even tried to rule people out based on what was written in the notebooks."

But as she was reading Eugene’s notebook, she suddenly realized something. When you’re just looking at words on a page, you have no way of knowing how much time passed between one word being written and the next.

’...And wasn’t it the same for the red X’s on the photos?’

"What evidence is there that those fifteen red X’s were drawn all at once? Considering Laura disappeared later, the most likely scenario is actually this: initially, only fourteen photos were crossed out. Someone only added the red X to Laura’s photo after she disappeared."

"In other words, Jones isn’t actually hiding among the final six people. Wasting time analyzing which of them is Jones means you’ve fallen for the trap and moved further from the truth."

She thought for a moment, tapping her finger on Osho’s notebook.

"The theory that ’Jones is one of the six’ is a bit like a conspiracy theory. All it needs is a small, initial discrepancy—like the number of un-crossed-out photos not matching the number of survivors. Once you accept that one little fact, you automatically start finding plenty of ’corroborating evidence’ to complete the narrative."

For example, Osho was clearly worried about the office being haunted in his notebook, but after nightfall and Laura’s disappearance, he refused to acknowledge the existence of supernatural forces. Doesn’t that sound like two different people?

But in reality, when people face an incomprehensible and nameless dread, their growing despair can trigger a state of denial. The deeper the despair, the greater the urge to simply close their eyes and look away.

Or, for that matter, was there ever really a person named Laura?

"So, situations like these, which have multiple possible explanations, can’t be considered hard proof. You shouldn’t even dwell on them, lest they lead your thinking astray. As for truly solid evidence, I’ve found two pieces so far."

First, the six remaining employees had all started to experience some degree of confusion about their colleagues’ identities.

This confusion wasn’t just about "Jones." During their final weekly meeting, the six of them looked at each other face-to-face, yet they still couldn’t be sure if the person opposite them was truly their colleague.

"This was a clue written in plain sight on the whiteboard. But for some reason, as I read through the notebooks, that fact gradually faded into the back of my mind."

The whiteboard listed three questions in a row: How many employees were originally in the company’s third-floor office, and who were they? Which employees are still alive and present now? Can they all be found on the HR roster?

Mai Mingle glanced at the whiteboard, then immediately turned back.

"Let’s look at the employee roster again. Other than Eugene and Laura, the remaining four are all from the same department. They couldn’t trust their own memories or perceptions. They couldn’t even vouch for their own department colleagues, unable to guarantee that so-and-so was a real person."

"They might remember fragments of time spent together or have impressions of others, but they were also afraid that these were all just manipulated, altered perceptions."

"So, the method the six of them adopted was this: they had to go around one by one, state their names, find the corresponding name on the employee roster, and put a checkmark next to it. Only then could they confirm the person was an original company employee and not Jones."

They couldn’t even be sure about the living, breathing people sitting right in front of them; they had to rely on the employee roster to confirm identities.

So what about the missing people?

The tip of Mai Mingle’s pen circled a sentence in the first notebook.

"’...Since no one could remember what Jones looked like, we had to use the process of elimination,’" she read softly.

"’The first time I read that, I didn’t think much of it and just skimmed past. But after looking at all the clues, that sentence took on a much deeper meaning.’"

Mai Mingle pushed the notebook aside and glanced at the wall covered in photos.

"If these six people couldn’t even be sure about the colleagues sitting right in front of them, how could they possibly have such crystal-clear memories of every single missing person that they could use a process of elimination based on memory alone?"

Not only was this illogical, but there was also no evidence to suggest they remembered the missing people clearly at all.

"’So, what did they use for their process of elimination? When their own perceptions were unreliable, how could they eliminate anything?’"

Mai Mingle’s gaze swept across the conference table, as if trying to see the six desperate people who once sat there. "The answer is obvious. They were using themselves as the basis for elimination."

In other words, their reference point was themselves.

If a person in a photo wasn’t currently sitting in that conference room for the weekly meeting, they were considered a missing colleague.

"’That’s the first solid piece of evidence,’ Mai Mingle concluded. ’The second is—’"

Second, something was wrong with the employee roster.

"’The employee roster has twenty people in total, listed by department, but there’s no manager.’"

Mai Mingle gestured toward the wall. Row after row of smiling faces, each obscured by a red X, stared back at her.

"’...That’s a little strange, but not entirely inexplicable.’"

Although a manager is technically an "employee," the roster seemed to list only regular staff, not management positions.

"’And that’s your sleight of hand.’"

Mai Mingle glanced back at the child’s doll on the floor outside the door.

"’Throughout the entire ’Find Jones’ game of hide-and-seek, it’s constantly emphasized that the JL Toy Company has twenty employees... Twenty names on the roster, twenty photos on the wall. But the true stroke of genius was that one sentence.’"

Mai Mingle gestured toward the door. "’Twenty employees, twenty toys.’"

The twenty unfamiliar toys were indeed a "red herring," but its purpose wasn’t to make people waste time guessing the relationship between the toys and the employees—though if it happened to waste some time, all the better.

Its real purpose was to make everyone believe the JL Toy Company employee roster was accurate. After all, if even a strange, eerie, supernatural power was matching people to toys one-to-one, then surely the JL Toy Company must have twenty employees, right?

"’You wanted everyone to fixate on the number ’20,’ to burn it into their minds. As long as they saw the total number was twenty, they would automatically assume it was correct and not question the figure...’"

"’I fell for it, too. For a while, it didn’t even occur to me that there should have been twenty-one photos on the wall.’"

"’Even if the employee roster doesn’t include management, there’s no reason to exclude the manager from the photos of the missing, is there? The biggest piece of evidence is that Eugene’s notebook clearly states the manager was also among the missing.’"

"’This proves that the employee roster is incorrect. It has an extra name that shouldn’t be there, one that took the manager’s place.’"

"’It’s highly likely that Eugene and the other five didn’t notice the extra name. When they were checking the roster, their focus wasn’t on seeing who was missing—given their clouded perceptions, they probably wouldn’t have recognized the names anyway. They were just looking for their own names on the list.’"

"’At this point, it doesn’t really matter whether the manager’s photo was on the wall or which name was the extra one... What’s important is the message it sends.’"

Mai Mingle tapped the employee roster on the table.

In a Nest trial, clues must be left for the Hunter to ensure a certain degree of fairness.

The manager’s "absence" was a clue that a Hunter could notice, thereby indirectly ensuring that fairness.

If the discrepancy on the list had been just a regular employee from a regular department, how could an outsider, who has no idea who works at the JL Toy Company, possibly spot the anomaly?

"’Excluding management, a list that should have only had nineteen names on it had an extra one. I don’t know which name was added, but that extra name belongs to one of the people who had ’theoretically already vanished.’’"

"’That is the biggest clue.’"

"’’Jones’ isn’t hiding among the ’survivors.’ It’s hiding among the ’already vanished.’’"

"’At first I thought my reasoning had hit a dead end... Most of the employees were already gone, so how could Jones hide among people who no longer existed? But then I remembered: the people who vanished are still here. They just exist in a different form.’"

She rose to her feet and walked slowly to the far end of the conference room, stopping before the wall of photos marked with red X’s.

"’The vanished people... aren’t they all on this wall?’"

Mai Mingle took a deep breath.

The one she was searching for in this game of hide-and-seek had been right beside her all along, watching her in silence.

"Jones, I’ve found you."