Illusion Report

Time—he needed time.

In the span of a mere twenty or thirty seconds, one crisis had followed another, each one sudden and incomprehensible.

But Chaisi knew that if he just had a little time, he could connect those "points of light" and arrange them into a clear, understandable picture.

The world might be chaotic and complex, but Chaisi believed everything could be understood in the same way: first, you grasp enough key pieces of information from the surrounding chaos and noise. Then, you use those points to connect the lines and sketch out the shape, pulling the entire framework of the situation to the surface.

However, time was precisely what he lacked at that moment.

When Chaisi turned his head and his gaze fell on the pitch-black glass bulging high into the car, he knew he’d made an unavoidable mistake. It was impossible *not* to look at the window; anyone in his shoes would have. But the moment he did, his concentration was broken.

In the instant his focus was broken, a newly exposed live wire behind him sprang to life, showering sparks as it whipped through the air toward the back of his head.

The very air seemed to twist and tense with the current. He could almost smell the electric sparks, feel a searing blue light flicker across the skin on the back of his neck.

’No matter how quick you are, you can’t be faster than electricity.’ 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Chaisi closed his eyes.

The moment stretched on, an eternity of waiting for the shock. A memory from years ago surfaced—of enduring electrocution to find a Path—a grim preview of the piercing, convulsive pain to come.

Yet, just a breath later, Chaisi opened his eyes.

The crackle of the current, a muffled groan of pain, the thud of a body hitting the floor... he heard it all. But he hadn’t felt the shock itself.

Someone had been electrocuted, but it wasn’t him.

Chaisi snapped his head around. Just as he’d thought, the driver was on the floor behind him, his face a ghastly shade of bluish-white. His body was curled up, wracked with convulsions, as if some vital nerve inside him was being violently yanked, preventing him from straightening up or escaping. The wire had lost its earlier vigor and now lay limply on the ground nearby, motionless, as if it had made a mistake.

Chaisi glanced at the car window, which was swelling up like a balloon, and then at the driver just a step behind him. For a second, he almost laughed.

"I forgot to tell you," he said, picking the T-bar up from the floor and weighing it in his hand. "I have great luck, because I drain it from the people around me."

The driver couldn’t get a word out; he seemed to be barely conscious.

"You followed my gaze just now, didn’t you? You turned and saw this window. I was distracted, so I let you go." Chaisi wasn’t actually looking for an answer from the driver; he needed to piece things together for himself. Staring at the window, he continued, "You saw what happened to the window, got scared, and took a step back—right into the path of the electricity, taking the shock for me. Am I right?"

A low rumble echoed from the driver’s throat.

’So it seems the "Rumor" Illusion can’t control its host’s physical actions. Otherwise, the driver wouldn’t have been scared enough to step back onto the wire.’

"I should thank you. By taking that shock for me, you’ve bought me a little time."

Chaisi gripped the T-bar and walked step by step toward the curved window, which bulged like a belly nine months pregnant. When he was two paces away, he swung the T-bar high, putting his full strength behind it, and slammed it into the pitch-black window. There was no sound of shattering glass. Instead, the window gave way like a sheet of rubber, caving inward and causing his blow to meet nothing but air.

’Behind the window must be one of the residents who can enter the human world. It makes sense that the T-bar would have no effect on it.’

"What I’m about to say isn’t for you. It’s for the thing in your mouth... a ’Rumor,’ isn’t it? I can call you that, can’t I?"

The driver lay on the ground, drifting in and out of consciousness. The voice from beneath his cheek fell silent, as if in tacit agreement.

"For an Illusion, having enough intelligence to know self-preservation is a rare thing indeed. But you have no self-awareness, and your intelligence isn’t that high. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be an Illusion. You’d be a resident."

On the surface of the window, which had swelled as if being inflated from within, the shape of a human hand appeared. The hand pressed against the glass from behind, its five fingers splayed wide as it slowly began to grope about.

Chaisi’s gaze followed the hand wherever it groped.

"If you were intelligent enough, you would have realized that I wasn’t threatening the driver and attacking him to hurt *him*. I was doing it to get to *you*. But that chain of cause and effect is too complex for you. You don’t get it... you only have instinct."

"When the life of the driver you’re inhabiting is threatened and he’s thrown into a state of fear and distress, your own self-preservation instinct gets triggered. I don’t know what you look like, but it seems you need to be attached to a person to exist. If he dies, you’re in big trouble, right?"

The driver’s convulsions stopped. He lay on the floor, still clinging to a sliver of consciousness, his eyelids fluttering.

From between his parted lips, a tiny voice said quickly, "Help me, help me!"—as if it were calling for help for the driver.

Chaisi turned his gaze back to the window. The bulging, pitch-black glass reflected a distorted image of him. As the corner of his own mouth curled up, the reflection revealed half of a twisted smile.

"Who are you calling for help?"

Chaisi wondered if other people’s lives were as full of ironic, dark humor as his own. If he weren’t the one at the center of it all, he might have actually laughed out loud.

After all, half the reason the driver was so terrified was because of the "subway serial killer" rumor the Illusion itself had created. It had made the driver believe he’d run into an actual serial killer—which, incidentally, also proved the "Rumor" didn’t possess a very high level of intelligence.

It was unaware of the effect its randomly generated rumors could have on its own host.

"Judging by the ’subway killer’ and the ’loose wire,’ you can’t just create things out of thin air. You can’t just make things happen by saying them."

"The things you say must have some basis in reality. Without people dying in the subway, you couldn’t have created the ’subway killer’ rumor. If there weren’t already wires here, you couldn’t have just willed one into existence."

"The wire couldn’t take me out, so you summoned a resident who can enter the human world... But you don’t really want to go back to the Nest. You just sense that you can hide from me there."

A surging, inky-black wave rose within Chaisi, and for a moment, he was seized by the impulse to grab the resident behind the window and grind it into dust and fragments.

’Sometimes, he wished he could use these hands to tear his entire life to shreds.’

As his voice faded, a dead silence fell over the train car.

The Illusion said nothing. The driver’s breathing was faint, like a silken thread. Behind the window, the hand finally found the seam where the glass met the frame. As if pulling out stitches, it began to tear the glass away, bit by bit.

"I don’t know just how low your intelligence is. But if you can understand a single word I’m saying, you’d better send that resident back to the Nest right now..."

’If this Illusion had really wanted to go home, it had countless opportunities before today.’

’There must be Hunters around Westley, and Hunters have Paths. It could have hitched a ride back. Even if it couldn’t get near a Hunter, why didn’t it summon this resident who can enter the human world sooner?’

"Help me..."

The Illusion spoke again, its voice slower this time. After hearing what Chaisi said, it seemed to hesitate. When it called for help again, the word ended with a question mark. "Help me?"

"I’m telling you to send it back for two reasons," Chaisi said, his tone calm. "First, once that resident gets in here, I can protect myself, but I can’t guarantee your host’s life."

A few grayish-white fingertips poked through the gap between the glass and the frame. Chaisi watched them and said in a low voice, "Second... your feeling was correct. I really don’t have a Path, so I can’t enter the Nest."

For a moment, both the resident and the Illusion seemed to be waiting for him to continue.

"However, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a resident."

Chaisi watched his reflection and slowly rolled his shoulders and neck.

"The thing I hate most in this world are residents who can enter the human world. When I see one, I can’t help but... get a little angry. Luckily, they’re rare, so I don’t lose my temper often."

"And yet, today, you’ve summoned one right in front of me."

Chaisi sighed.

"If you really want to save yourself, the last thing you want to do is make me angry."