Illusion Report

Ever since he started chasing the subway, a question had been lingering in the back of Chaisi’s mind.

Blackmoor City had at least several thousand subway cars in service, which could be separated and reconfigured into different trains. Once a train left the station, finding a specific car again was like finding a needle in a haystack—especially since they were cleaned daily.

How could Ivan be so sure he could get the Illusion back?

Watching the subway driver back away step by step before turning to run, the answer suddenly became clear, taking shape in Chaisi’s mind.

The target Ivan needed to find again wasn’t one of the hundreds of identical, untraceable subway cars; it was a subway employee with a name and a steady job. Finding the car was impossible, but finding the man? That was simple.

He almost wanted to laugh out loud. He had thought of Ivan as a smart idiot, but he hadn’t accurately guessed the depths of his stupidity and genius.

A priceless Illusion, powerful enough to rewrite fate, had actually been placed on a complete stranger. Chaisi wasn’t sure if it was stupidity or boldness—perhaps there was no difference between the two.

The true genius of Ivan’s plan was that no one in the world, other than himself, could ever connect him to this fleeing subway driver. They were two distant, random people in the vast sea of Blackmoor City. There was no link between them whatsoever.

Apparently, Ivan understood perfectly well that if someone was tailing him, even the pizza delivery guy would be dug up and thoroughly investigated, let alone people he actually had a relationship with.

Therefore, a complete stranger with absolutely no connection to him became the safest possible hiding place.

After planting the Illusion on the driver, he could boldly interact with anyone he wanted. In fact, the more people he contacted, the more he could mislead his trackers and waste their time and energy. Hadn’t Chaisi himself wasted a good deal of effort on that pizza delivery guy?

’It seems Ivan didn’t think of that, though,’ Chaisi thought. ’Otherwise, he wouldn’t have holed himself up that day.’

As he mused, Chaisi reached out a large hand and gently grabbed the back of the driver’s clothes.

When Chaisi’s hand seized the back of his shirt and yanked him to the ground, the driver didn’t seem to comprehend what was happening. He fell flat on his back, his face a mask of confusion, as if he couldn’t figure out how Chaisi had gotten behind him.

It wasn’t until the back of his head hit the floor with a THUD that the driver was jolted back to his senses. He hissed in pain, struggling to roll over and scramble up as he cried out, "Please! I beg you, don’t kill me! I haven’t done anything!"

That was probably the truth. But of course, Chaisi wasn’t about to say so.

He pressed a large hand onto the driver’s chest, his long, pale fingers caging the man’s torso like bars.

Chaisi wasn’t using any force, but the driver didn’t dare move. His shadow fell over the man’s face like the canopy of a giant tree.

"W-what are you going to do to me?" the driver asked, his voice trembling. He propped himself up on his elbows, not daring to get up completely, nor to lie all the way back down.

He’d asked the million-dollar question.

In truth, Chaisi hadn’t expected to find the most incomprehensible Illusion of all in this manner.

He had the man in his grasp, but as for what to do next, he was, for once, at a loss.

First, Ivan wouldn’t have had the time or opportunity that day to cook up a plausible excuse to get the driver to take something. The driver couldn’t possibly know he was carrying an Illusion, nor did he seem like someone who knew about the existence of the Path or understood the world of the Nest.

Besides, Ivan would never have entrusted the Illusion to someone connected to the Nest. After all, his only hope of getting it back was if the carrier was an ordinary person, completely oblivious to the Nest.

Ivan must have attached the Illusion to him when he wasn’t looking.

That thought raised a lot of questions.

’An Illusion that exists in the form of a "rumor"—what does that even mean? How does it attach to a person? What does it look like? How can I remove it?’

"I-I’m still on duty. If they see I’m not at my post soon, someone will definitely come check on things..." the driver pleaded in a low voice. "Please, just let me go. I have a bit of face blindness, I won’t remember what you look like..."

Chaisi had never met an adult who, after seeing him once, wouldn’t recognize him a second time.

"No rush," he said softly, thinking for a moment.

’How do you get the truth out of a target who doesn’t even know the truth himself?’

He’d interrogated plenty of people, but he’d never encountered a situation like this: the target held the key intelligence, yet knew nothing at all.

Judging by Ivan’s route that day, he hadn’t had time to interact with anyone. The Illusion must have been passed on somehow in a fleeting encounter; the driver might not even remember him.

The chances were slim, but Chaisi decided to try anyway. After briefly describing Ivan’s appearance, he was met with, as expected, a blank stare.

"This ’subway serial killer’ you mentioned," he began after a moment of thought, deciding to approach from an angle the driver could actually answer. "Where did you hear about that?"

The driver shot him a quick glance from the corner of his eye, then hastily fixed his gaze on a distant handrail.

He paused before speaking, as if testing the waters. "...Well, a few nights ago, they found a dead woman on the C-line after it shut down for the night, right? I remember it was on the news."

Chaisi frowned.

He did recall something like that. But someone dying in Blackmoor City was so common that if the driver hadn’t mentioned it, the news story would have vanished from his memory forever.

"The subway staff thought she’d just fallen asleep and missed her stop, but they couldn’t wake her up. When they pushed her shoulder, her whole body just rolled onto the floor."

As the driver spoke, his gaze drifted to an empty seat nearby, as if he could see the woman’s body tumbling to the ground. "The guy who found her is a colleague of mine, we play poker together sometimes... When he told me about it later, his face was as white as a sheet."

’What does one dead person have to do with the Illusion—especially one that’s a "rumor"? And how did this "subway serial killer" rumor even start?’

But the driver seemed to misinterpret Chaisi’s subtle expression and rushed to explain. "Of course, thinking about it now, I’m sure I was mistaken. A man of your caliber, so tall and distinguished, how could you be a serial killer? Ahem, it’s my fault. I’ve been scared lately, a bit paranoid when I’m alone on the train. The moment I saw you carrying that rod, my mind just went to a bad place... Back then, the woman’s body was just slumped against the wall, so you couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t until she rolled onto the floor that my colleague saw the impact wound on her head..."

Some people, when panicked, lose control of their mouths. They talk more and more, faster and faster, as if trying to build a foundation of words to stand on. This driver was clearly one of them.

Chaisi decided to stoke that fear, to burn a bigger, blacker hole in the man’s reason.

He looked down at the driver and slowly cracked a smile.

When Chaisi smiled, his lips thinned. His teeth were very white, but not a bright, lustrous white. It was the suffocating, grim white of concrete. The lifeless teeth were arranged tightly behind his thin lips; when he smiled, they were all revealed, as if a zipper had been pulled open across the lower half of his face.

"You see, it takes skill to weave a logically consistent story," Chaisi said softly. "A skill you don’t have."

"Huh? Me?" The driver was startled, as expected. "I’m not lying! The news story is real, you can search for it if you don’t believe me! I only misunderstood you because I saw the news, it was really rude of me..."

The news was real, but that didn’t explain his behavior.

"How can you call someone a serial killer for killing just one person?" Chaisi asked, like a diligent editor looking for inconsistencies in a story. "Or rather, why do you think that dead woman was killed by a serial killer?"

The driver’s mouth fell slightly open, as if he’d been asked a question he hadn’t even considered himself.

A small bulge suddenly pushed out from inside one of his cheeks, slid down, and then disappeared—as if he’d prodded it with his tongue.

"I... you misunderstood. I haven’t gotten to the second incident yet. It’s because crime has been bad in the Brooklyn District lately. After the woman’s body was found, there was another attack. Someone getting off their night shift was leaving the subway station, and just as they stepped out, they got hit with a rod—I mean, a club, right on the head..."

He swallowed.

"The detectives investigating the case questioned a bunch of us from the subway company. They didn’t say it outright, but from what we gathered, they suspect someone is committing a series of crimes..." The driver prodded his cheek with his tongue again before continuing. "That’s how the rumor started, I’m not lying to you. One of the detectives was really pretty, too. She and her partner looked good together, a real vibe between them... That all got passed around, everyone knows about it."

Chaisi was silent for a second or two.

Although many people babbled without a filter when nervous, the sudden emergence of such gossip still made him pause. "...What?"

"A real vibe,"

Under the grip of fear, the driver’s words tumbled out in a rush. "They were always talking back and forth, no one else could get a word in. The man wasn’t a cop, apparently, but a criminology professor brought in as a consultant from some university. Heard he’s divorced or something. Anyway..."

Chaisi released the hand pinning him down and pulled out his phone.

Life was a strange, unpredictable thing.

For example, the him from this morning could never have predicted that the him at noon would be driving recklessly across Blackmoor City. And the him driving recklessly across Blackmoor City could never have predicted that thirty minutes later, he would be on a subway train, taking out his phone, opening the App Store, and downloading Netflix.

"What are you doing?" From his angle, the driver could see the phone screen, but not clearly.

"You have an account." It wasn’t a question; it was a statement from Chaisi. "...Log in."

"W-why?" The driver was utterly bewildered but clearly didn’t dare argue. He quickly typed in his password while asking, "If I give you my account, can I go?"

Chaisi took the phone without a word.

On the home screen, under the "Continue Watching" section, were several shows that had been viewed. He scrolled through them and, within seconds, had locked onto his target.

He looked at the screen, then back at the driver.

The man had no idea what Chaisi was doing. He just stared up with a baffled expression, a sheen of sweat on his face, his mouth half-open as if it were a small cave carved into his features.

Unless the subway driver moonlighted as an Oscar-winning actor after his shift, it was obvious he had absolutely no idea that the story he had just told—about a female detective and a male consultant investigating a serial killer—was the plot of the first season of a Netflix crime drama he had apparently watched.

Now, Chaisi could no longer say the man’s story wasn’t consistent.