Illusion Report

Chaisi stopped dead in his tracks.

The tall woman in a black coat holding a black umbrella had walked past him, her pace unhurried. The sound of her heels striking the pavement grew more distant with each step. He spun around, his gaze fixed on her retreating back.

Her long hair was draped over her back, the ends damp and slightly curled. She seemed very thin; the calves and ankles visible beneath her coat were slender and delicate.

Chaisi frowned, unable to immediately explain why he had stopped.

’Something subtle seemed to have clawed at the edge of his consciousness as they passed each other, compelling him to look back... What was that?’

’She couldn’t be the one who controlled the bullets...’

’Had he seen her before?’

’Or was it just because she was here, at this particular time and place?’

Thanksgiving was next Thursday. Some people had a habit of visiting the graves of deceased relatives before the holiday, so the cemetery had slightly more visitors than usual lately. After taking Uncle Kai and Aunt Hai to the hospital, Chaisi had spotted three or four ordinary people visiting graves nearby. Thankfully, the cemetery was vast, and they were far enough away that none of them had realized what had just happened on this hillside.

If that woman was just another one of those visitors, her presence wouldn’t be strange at all.

Intuition and paranoia were two feelings that were sometimes hard to tell apart, but Chaisi wasn’t in the habit of trying to distinguish between them.

Whoever made him suspicious had to be the one to dispel that suspicion. He certainly wouldn’t let the chance to grab the woman slip away while he was lost in doubt and hesitation.

The thought process took a while to describe, but it all happened in an instant. Chaisi was already sprinting straight for the woman with the umbrella. Since her pace was so unhurried, she hadn’t gotten far. In the space of a breath or two, the wind he stirred up was already hitting her back.

The woman was clearly startled by the sound of his footsteps. As she spun around in a hurry, her black umbrella flung a circle of glistening raindrops into the air.

Their eyes met, and her face went deathly pale. She tried to shy away, but at such close range, Chaisi had never met anyone who could escape his grasp.

His hand was like a white beast, opening its jaws in the pouring rain and sinking its teeth into the woman’s shoulder. His fingers dug in deep, and with a hard yank, he pulled her stumbling toward him. She gasped, a sharp, cold breath drawn in through her teeth from the pain. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

"Lower your collar,"

Chaisi stared at the woman from under the shadow of the umbrella and commanded, "Let me see your face."

’Even he had to admit his tone sounded like the most despicable kind of criminal.’

The woman seemed terrified into a stupor. One hand still clutched her coat collar as she stared at Chaisi, neither speaking nor moving. Losing patience, Chaisi didn’t care that she was a woman; he batted her hand away and pulled her collar apart, clearly revealing the face beneath.

The moment his gaze landed on her face, Chaisi froze.

To be honest, before seeing her face, he’d somehow been seventy or eighty percent sure that he’d seen her before. But now, looking at her, he was dumbfounded.

It was clearly the face of a complete stranger.

Chaisi was very sensitive to faces. Once he saw someone, he could recognize them again, no matter how much time had passed.

Sometimes, he might not recall the specific features of a person—like Damian, who had been dead for a long time—but if that person appeared before him again, he would never mistakenly think it was their first meeting.

And he was absolutely certain this was the first time he had ever seen the woman in front of him.

’So she really was just an ordinary person visiting a grave?’

’Well, this is a bit awkward...’

"Sorry," Chaisi said instinctively, letting go of her collar. "I thought you were—"

Before he could finish, his phone suddenly rang loudly in his pocket. The sharp, abrupt ringtone cut off the rest of his sentence, which he hadn’t known how to finish anyway.

Feeling as though he’d been saved, Chaisi quickly pulled out his phone and took two steps back. The woman, still looking deeply shaken, gave him a look as if he were a madman while he glanced down at his screen, then hastily turned and ran off.

The screen showed a number that wasn’t saved in his contacts, but Chaisi recognized it after a moment’s surprise—he’d already received several calls from this number today.

He looked up at the stranger’s rapidly retreating back, then back down at his phone screen. After a fleeting moment of hesitation, he answered the call.

"...Jin Xueli?"

"It’s me," the woman’s voice on the phone sounded rather surprised. "How did you know? Did you save my number?"

"No," Chaisi replied, his eyes fixed on the direction in which the strange woman had disappeared.

’She’s not the one who controls bullets, I’ve never seen her before, and I didn’t see her when I was searching the cemetery... So was she really just someone who happened to come visit a grave after the fact?’

"...You know, sometimes it’s impossible to have a conversation with you," Jin Xueli grumbled.

"What do you want?"

"A lot, actually." Jin Xueli seemed to be having trouble broaching the subject, hemming and hawing for a moment before hesitantly asking, "I have a few questions for you... First, can you really erase the records from the police system? How do I know you actually erased them? What if you’re lying to me?"

Chaisi was already in a bad mood, and her words almost made him laugh in exasperation.

"What good would lying to you do me?" he retorted. "I could just not erase your records at all. Why would I waste my breath lying to you about it?"

"Oh—oh, right." Realization seemed to dawn on Jin Xueli, as if she’d just remembered something. "Then, second question, what’s going to happen with the Central Police Station? None of the people whose homes were invaded died, you know. Aren’t they going to keep investigating us afterward?"

"It’s a long story. Mercury has her own way of handling things."

Chaisi didn’t have the patience to chat with her right now—not even if there was something about Jin Xueli that he found very peculiar.

"You can call me back in a couple of days to ask for details. In short, don’t worry about it. Their main target is me. I’m not scared, so what are you so worried about?"

"I have a guilty conscience, of course," Jin Xueli said with surprising frankness. "Wait, don’t hang up yet, I have one more question, and it’s the most important one!"

’How did she know I was about to hang up?’

Chaisi forced himself to be patient and asked, "What question?"

"The person the police were trying to catch today was you, but how did they know where you’d be?"

The moment Jin Xueli asked this question, Chaisi knew he probably wouldn’t be hanging up anytime soon.

She continued, "Did you tell anyone your whereabouts, or where we were meeting? Were you followed today?"

"...Neither," Chaisi said slowly, a chill belatedly seeping into his consciousness.

So many unexpected things had happened today, one after another, that he was only just now starting to think about this.

If the police had tried to catch him at the cemetery, that would have been easy to understand, because he came here every November 19th on a fool’s errand.

The strange part was that the police had surrounded and tried to capture him in a place he hadn’t even known he would be—on the road while taking Jin Xueli home.

"The only person who knew where I would be was you, because we arranged a meeting spot," he said quietly into the phone. "...And you were the one who got in my car and had me drive down that road."

"Wait, are you jumping to conclusions? Your tone is making me—well, I won’t say scared, but I don’t like it."

Jin Xueli seemed to sense the danger, too, and quickly explained, "I have nothing to do with the police! Think about it, if I wanted to set you up, would I have let myself get dragged into it too? Would I have let them take my fingerprints?"

The tension in Chaisi’s muscles slowly eased.

Other things were debatable, but Jin Xueli’s behavior at the police station had certainly been that of a desperate person on the brink of disaster if her fingerprints weren’t erased.

"I’ve been thinking about this ever since I left the station. Why were the police able to pinpoint your location so accurately? You don’t seem like the kind of idiot who wouldn’t know if he was being followed."

Jin Xueli was one of the few people who dared to speak so frankly to him, though he had no idea where she got the nerve. "So I was thinking, is it possible that the person being followed wasn’t you, but me?"

"Are you an idiot?"

"...Sometimes it’s just impossible to talk to you."

Jin Xueli seemed to suppress a sigh before continuing, "Of course I’m not an idiot, but I’m easy to follow. I get distracted by my surroundings easily, and I’m not used to being on high alert all the time in Blackmoor City. Besides, I can’t think of any reason why someone would follow me—who just assumes they’re being followed for no reason?"

"Get to the point," Chaisi urged.

Jin Xueli suddenly fell silent for a few seconds, as if the next words were very difficult for her to say.

"I’ve been thinking it over and over... If I was being followed at that time... no matter how I think about it, there’s only one person it could be."

Chaisi waited for her to continue.

"Um... do you know someone named Morando?" Jin Xueli said haltingly. "If you don’t know her, don’t jump to conclusions, I’ll think of other possibilities... It’s just that she was right there when I arranged to meet you. But it might not have been her..."

Chaisi gripped his phone tightly.

"I know her," he said in a low voice.

Jin Xueli was taken aback, as if deeply disappointed by his answer. "Rea—really?"

"She even shot at me a few times today," Chaisi said. "Come to the address I’m sending you now. We’ll talk in person. I happen to need an extra pair of hands."

If Morando was still keeping an eye on her, then Jin Xueli coming to the cemetery might very well lure Morando—or at the very least, Morando’s people—back here as well.

Morando probably wasn’t stupid enough to walk right into a trap, but it was worth a shot. The worst-case scenario was just seeing Jin Xueli again.

"Hey, but it’s almost dark..."

"Five thousand dollars."

"Have you sent the address yet?" Jin Xueli’s tone changed instantly.

"Sending it now," Chaisi said, hanging up the phone.

The call screen vanished. He lowered his eyes, about to unlock his phone, when he noticed a push notification he had received at some point. It looked like an "Amber Alert."

’...Wait. It’s not an Amber Alert.’

Although it looked similar at first glance, the first line read—

! CRITICAL NEST NOTIFICATION !