Illusion Report

Chaisi arrived sooner than she’d expected.

She didn’t know which of her shouts had finally brought him, only that a flashlight beam had suddenly flashed across her face. The brilliant white light made Jin Xueli flinch away, her eyes narrowing to slits.

The dial tone that had been pressing relentlessly against her ear suddenly cut out, as if yanked into thin air. A second later, the policewoman was thrown against a nearby wall. The impact created a dull, heavy THUD in the subterranean cell.

The policewoman’s shriek, the CLATTER of her phone hitting the floor, the rush of air, the sounds of a struggle... For a moment, it was as if a small, chaotic bomb had gone off just outside the iron bars of her cell.

"Chaisi...?"

Jin Xueli looked up just in time to see a tall, slender shadow stomp down hard on the policewoman’s phone. The screen fractured, and the dial tone and the distant ringing phone were both swallowed by the silence.

He glanced at Jin Xueli. Backlit, only the barest outline of his profile was visible. The light itself seemed to take on a skeletal form, sharp and unyielding.

"You’re finally here!" Jin Xueli said, her heart finally dropping from her throat. "I was just—"

Before she could finish, Chaisi suddenly strode forward, reached out, and snatched the phone she’d been holding to her ear for protection. It was a single, swift motion, but it was enough to make Jin Xueli freeze.

Ever since becoming a Hunter, she had focused on training her strength and agility; she was by no means weak. And it was precisely because she had some strength of her own that she could recognize the almost inhuman power behind that simple snatch.

’I can’t get into a physical fight with this guy. If something comes up, I’ll have to find another way to handle it...’ Jin Xueli thought as she got to her feet. Then, she realized something.

The moment the phone left her hand, the surroundings returned to dead silence.

The distant footsteps and the faint sounds of doors opening and closing from moments before vanished in an instant, as if they’d been swallowed back into the very bowels of the Central Police Station.

’Huh? Could it be—’ 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Chaisi glanced at the phone’s dark screen, then passed it back to her between the iron bars.

’He’s checking to see if the phone was in a call, isn’t he?’

’In other words, he knows that making a call on the ’Nest’s communication network’ gets you possessed by a resident... That’s why he had to check my phone’s status.’

Jin Xueli took the phone and held it to her ear for a moment before asking in a low voice, "So, I can only hear what’s going on around me when I’m holding someone else’s phone?"

"You catch on quick. You must be a Hunter too, right?"

The one who answered wasn’t Chaisi, but a woman standing behind him, holding a flashlight.

She was sitting on the steps, holding the flashlight in front of her body in a way that kept her face in shadow. Only when the beam happened to sweep aside for a moment did Jin Xueli catch a glimpse of dense, script-like tattoos covering her neck.

"That’s right," Jin Xueli said, her anger flaring at the reminder. "I just wanted to trade some information with him, and as a result, I got dragged into this and landed in jail!"

The woman tilted her head back and laughed. "You’ll get used to it. He has a way of sucking all the luck out of everyone around him."

Jin Xueli’s first and second responses were both highly inappropriate, so she bit her tongue.

"That policewoman... is she still human? You just tossed her aside like that. The resident possessing her isn’t just going to give up, is it?"

As if on cue, the policewoman began to stir, shakily getting to her feet from the corner where she’d landed.

The space at the bottom of the steps, right in front of the cell, was already cramped. With Chaisi’s tall and broad frame standing there, it was even more crowded, leaving almost no room to move. The policewoman only had to lift her arm to grab him.

And clearly, that was exactly what it intended to do.

Just as Jin Xueli was about to shout a warning, the woman on the steps let out a sharp, piercing whistle. The policewoman’s head snapped up. For a second, the motion reminded Jin Xueli of a dog suddenly recalling its master was present.

"Get out," the woman on the steps said coldly, staring at the creature. "Don’t touch my client."

Jin Xueli’s mouth fell open. She stared, dumbfounded, as the possessed policewoman turned wordlessly and shambled up the stairs, disappearing into the dimness of the first-floor lobby. For a moment, her brain couldn’t quite catch up. "Huh? Wh-Why did it..."

"We’re all on contract," the woman explained, a statement that—if anything—only made things more confusing.

’...What contract workers?’

’Was ’contract worker’ really a term that belonged in a situation like this?’

Chaisi asked the woman, "Are you protecting me, or that resident?"

"It’s not easy to sign a good resident, you know," the woman said with a laugh. "I risked my life going into a Nest for every single one of them."

Jin Xueli’s confusion deepened, her mind a thick fog of questions. But before she could ask any of them, she saw Chaisi turn around, apparently ready to leave.

"Hey! Where are you going? You have to let me out!"

"I have other business. I don’t have time to look for the cell key. You’ll have to wait."

’Absolutely not.’

’Leaving aside the fact that Jin Xueli despised confinement and a lack of freedom more than anything, there was the major question of whether Chaisi would even remember to come back for her when he was done.’

’Besides, if he doesn’t have time to find the key now, what makes him think he’ll have time when he actually has to leave?’

"Wait," she yelled. "You can’t just leave me locked up in here! What happens if another resident shows up?"

"Hide in the back of the cell," Chaisi said without turning back. "You’ve already figured out the rules, haven’t you?"

’As long as she wasn’t directly touched by a phone that was actively making or receiving a call, it seemed the residents couldn’t possess her. In that sense, the cell itself was a natural shield.’

But Jin Xueli just wanted out.

’Even if the back of the cell was the safest place in the entire Central Police Station, she couldn’t stand being confined to this tiny space. As a sane, rational adult, being unable to decide where she went or what she did—being oppressed and restricted by some external will—wasn’t that the most profound insult to her very being?’

’Of course, her mindset wasn’t that extreme. For example, Jin Xueli agreed that people should obey traffic laws—as social creatures, humans couldn’t just do whatever they pleased.’

’But being locked up, losing her personal freedom... that was unbearable, even for a minute.’

"Just get one of your Mercenaries to find the key for me! It won’t get in your way. Hey, don’t leave! You still owe me a favor!"

"I’ll get you out of the Central Police Station. That will clear the debt."

It took a second for his words to sink in, and when they did, Jin Xueli felt a breath catch in her chest. ’What kind of deadbeat logic is that? The only reason I’m in here is because I got dragged into his mess!’

But this was hardly the time to argue the semantics of repaying a favor. Just as she was racking her brain for a way to convince Chaisi, the woman with the flashlight spoke up.

"Sweetie," she said with a smile, "we’re looking for their chief—the coward is hiding who-knows-where—and we’re short on people. But don’t you worry, I’ll remember you. If he won’t let you out, I will. I like girls who are quick on their feet and straight to the point, just like you."

"Wait! Let me out, and I’ll help you look! I can pull my own weight!"

Jin Xueli’s eyes lit up. She seized the opportunity and quickly pitched herself. But as she spoke, she suddenly recalled something she’d glimpsed earlier and couldn’t help but ask, "Is the chief a tall, skinny guy? Seems pretty young?"

On the stairs, Chaisi stopped in his tracks.

From her angle, all she could see were his dark trousers and shoes.

"Nope," the woman answered. "He’s a fat guy with a huge gut."

Chaisi’s voice drifted down from above. "What makes you think he’s tall and skinny?"

’...An opening.’

Jin Xueli smiled to herself. She reached her hand through the iron bars and tapped the lock.

"Let me out, and I’ll tell you what I saw. Besides, like you said, you have to let me out eventually anyway, right? Don’t look so grumpy. Even if you want to kill me, you’ll have to open the door first."

Only later would she learn that getting Chaisi to let out a long, weary sigh was, in itself, a genuine accomplishment.