Illusion Report

Mercury got on her motorcycle and revved the engine with a ROAR.

"When you see the car, use the Illusion,"

Mercury sped into the traffic of Blackmoor City amid the roaring engine, saying through gritted teeth, "Once the Illusion takes effect, don’t worry about us being in the city. Just flip the whole car. I want to smear the pavement with that person’s flesh and blood."

She had once sat in the empty, after-hours bar, smiled at Mercury, and said, "...I don’t believe you."

Mercury had raised an eyebrow then, feigning surprise. "You don’t believe me? You don’t even believe something so ordinary?"

She’d laughed, amused. Her voice was soft and deep, yet bright, like molten silver shrouded in mist. A voice like that, even when cursing someone, was impossible not to listen to.

"As long as it traps someone, you could fire a rocket launcher at them and the person inside wouldn’t get hurt? If you have something like that, why don’t you sell it to the military? It must be worth a fortune."

Mercury lowered her head, looked at her drink, and smiled faintly. "It’s useless to the military."

Even if she found a buyer for it, it wouldn’t be the military. It could only protect one person at a time, and the protected individual would feel as if they were trapped in shadows, their identity forgotten, their memories blurred. They couldn’t break free on their own; it required an external force to remove the Illusion.

On a battlefield, it was obviously useless. Because one needed outside help to escape the Illusion’s effect, many influential figures were wary of it and not particularly interested.

But even if Mercury had explained, she wouldn’t have believed it.

No, it wasn’t that she ’didn’t believe’ so much as she simply didn’t care. For things one didn’t care about, belief and disbelief were irrelevant.

She had long since sacrificed her entire being to music. Mercury could see that.

In this world, nothing besides music could occupy the slightest corner of her mind.

Nothing could stop her from getting on stage to sing.

Whether it was the Nest, the Illusion, or even Mercury herself, their importance was perhaps no more than that of a bedtime story the upstairs neighbor told their child at night—completely irrelevant to her.

Only after two straight years of attending her shows did Mercury slowly earn a place in her world.

Later, once they grew close, they would often sit together at the bar after it had closed and the lights were off, chatting and drinking under a small table lamp.

When she was tipsy, she always said Mercury was her first true soulmate in this world.

"You love my music, I can tell," she’d say, her words slurring. "It’s not the kind of ’oh, that’s pretty good’ liking... It’s... a true, genuine... love."

Mercury didn’t say anything.

Because words were too flimsy.

She was reluctant to recall the moment she first heard that song, when she lifted her gaze to the stage and saw her.

They say that in the process of remembering, the brain unconsciously alters memories, distorting and changing them.

That was the one memory from her life in this Human World that Mercury was unwilling to let be altered or changed in the slightest.

’Such talent, such ambition, so rare and beautiful...’

’She shouldn’t be confined to a bar as a resident singer. That voice... if it had to say "thank you" for a tip, it would be an insult to her gift.’

Mercury wanted her to know that in this Human World, there were still people who could recognize beauty.

"I know how to make you famous," Mercury said in a low voice.

𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

It was something one of the residents had told her.

Each resident had their own logic for viewing the world; strangely, however they applied that logic, the world would obey and change accordingly, as if it were the most natural thing.

"Why can some people never get a break, while others just have that ’star quality’? It’s because their ’shell’ has been removed."

That resident hadn’t wanted to sign a contract with Mercury, so they had given her a lot of information in exchange. "You polish away a person’s outer shell. Even if what’s underneath is just an unremarkable, ordinary stone, if you polish it hard enough, it’ll still shine a little. Once it has a light, it will automatically attract gazes... and fame will follow. How much fame depends on how brightly the person under the shell shines."

And beneath her shell, she glittered like a galaxy of diamonds.

"But be careful," the resident said, wagging a finger. "That shell is also a person’s protective shield. It’s dangerous without it... If you remove it completely..."

’Then I’ll be your protective shield.’

Mercury forgot when she had slung the shoulder-fired cannon onto her back. ’Huh? Did I have it with me when I got on the bike?’

But it didn’t matter. It was fine.

What mattered was that Mercury had finally spotted the old, gray Ford pickup.

She was in the truck, protected by the Illusion, enveloped in shadows like a dark river.

Therefore, Mercury could unleash a hail of bullets on that old, gray Ford pickup without restraint.

She had to flip it, watch it burn, make it tumble end over end, and force that worthless person inside to experience the greatest, deepest fear of their life.

Thalassa, the goddess of the sea in Ancient Greek mythology—the name she had given herself after her debut.

"Siroksha!"

Mercury screamed, as if trying to call her back from this vast, dreamlike world. "Siroksha, I’m here!"

***

「December 5, 2026, 8:57 PM」

It was as if a cannonball had slammed into the sea. The flash of fire, the sound of gunfire, and the shudder of the truck toppling over tore and burned countless holes in the dense curtain of rain, which billowed with white steam—

Mai Mingle gasped and woke from the dream.

’What’s going on?’

’How was I still standing? I hadn’t fallen asleep, yet I was trapped in a dream?’

Her hands felt so heavy. Her arms were trembling, and a dull ache throbbed in her shoulder...

She looked down and understood.

Mai Mingle looked at the heavy machine gun in her hands, then at the tanker truck in the distance. It had lost control on the road, and even after toppling over, its momentum carried it forward, smashing sideways into a building by the roadside.

...Not a truck.

She wasn’t Mercury, and she wasn’t Siroksha.

She hadn’t fired on the pickup that had kidnapped the singer. That wasn’t her story; it was a dream.

She was Mai Mingle, but she didn’t understand what had just happened—why she had woken up holding a heavy machine gun, having just taken down a vehicle.

Taken down a large tanker truck.

A tanker truck that was already on fire, its tank damaged, black liquid gushing out.

The torrential downpour, the swelling river, the storm surging into the city... The floodwaters of the world diluted the black liquid, only to become an endless black liquid themselves.

The rain, carrying the black fluid, rushed through manhole covers, into the sewers, and into the river, spreading endlessly before her eyes toward every corner of Blackmoor City.

She had no idea where this tanker truck had come from or what it was carrying.

Mai Mingle stood dumbly in the rain, watching as a figure emerged step-by-step from behind the tanker truck across the road.

She had never seen Mercury before, but she recognized her in an instant. In Siroksha’s dream, Mercury had already become the person most familiar to her.

Mercury’s expression was dazed and lost. The rain had washed her face bone-white, and her soaked hair was blacker than the stormy night.

Her long, pale neck was densely tattooed with names.

She glanced at Mai Mingle, showing no surprise—or interest—at her appearance.

"Mercury?" Mai Mingle called out softly. "What are you... What just happened?"

Mercury turned her head to look at the ’bleeding’ tanker truck. The flames, not yet extinguished by the downpour, flickered faintly in her eyes.

"I don’t know why I’m here either... I remember I had a dream," Mercury murmured. "I dreamed... that I saved her."

She held the heavy machine gun as if she didn’t know where she was or who she was talking to.

People are often like this when they first wake from a powerful dream.

Mai Mingle, having just woken from the same dream, was still in a daze herself.

"You dreamed? Then Siroksha..."

"Siroksha died five years ago," Mercury said. "A gunman broke into her small, private concert. She was shot on the spot.

"They say dreams are humanity’s unfulfilled wishes... right?"

Mercury said, then gave a small laugh.

"I dreamed she didn’t die. I dreamed the gunman tied her up, put her in a car, and drove away. I dreamed I chased after them, flipped that pickup truck, and screamed her name..."

When I am awakened by another, I will sink to the bottom of the sea, never to see the light of day again.