Illusion Report

Was he wrong?

After five-year-old Chaisi had run a few steps in a panic, he suddenly remembered his injured mother was still lying by the side of the road.

He instinctively stopped, turned on his heel without a second thought, and rushed back, wanting to help his mother up so they could run together—shouldn’t he have done that? Was he wrong?

"I told you to run!"

His mother’s shriek was so loud and sharp, it hardly seemed to come from the same person who had been too gravely injured to speak just moments before.

"Mom—"

He grabbed his mother’s arm, only managing to get out that single word.

The next second, he was looking down at his own feet dangling in midair, swaying farther and farther from the ground.

His mother tilted up a face half-blackened with blood, her expression frozen for a moment in shock and terror, before she roared, "Let him go!"

The thing wasn’t gripping Chaisi, nor was it lifting him.

He slowly realized that a long, black shadow had pierced through his chest, extending out into the air like a sword that had run him through, hoisting him into the air. But Chaisi felt no pain, nor was he bleeding. He had just lost all his strength, feeling drowsy and unable to lift his head.

"No need to rush," the Resident buzzed from behind him. "I don’t think you’ve fully grasped the beauty of the current situation. Allow me to explain it to you in detail."

His mother’s whimpers drifted between its words like the howling of a wolf.

"The flavor I most love to savor and appreciate is ’irony.’ It’s a delicacy found only in humans; we have nothing like it in the Nest.

"The disappointment of someone who buys a lottery ticket and doesn’t win is still disappointment, but it tastes bland and uninteresting, like a cup of instant noodles—it only fills the stomach. Your disappointment right now, however, is a gourmet delicacy. Why? Because the dashing of your hopes is steeped in ’irony.’ A losing lottery ticket lacks that flavor. I simply must make you understand its magnificence, or this itch will be unbearable."

The Resident jiggled Chaisi up and down a few times and sighed in satisfaction.

"First of all, your Path is just delightful. The only way to enter the Nest is through a car crash. No wonder you’re thirty-six and only just opened your Path for the first time... But if this crash had happened a few months ago, none of this would be happening tonight. Do you know why?"

His mother’s gaze was fixed on Chaisi, following his slight swaying in midair.

"Because the population of your Luocheng region only just surpassed ten million this year. You see, if this car crash had happened any earlier, it would have just been ordinary bad luck. If you had moved this year, like you’d been planning, you would have never entered the Nest for the rest of your life... Tell me, isn’t the timing of this crash perfectly ironic, perfectly delicious?"

Chaisi vaguely recalled his mother asking him once if he wanted to move to her hometown.

At the time, though, he couldn’t understand what moving had to do with any of this.

"Thinking you’d escaped, you had no idea you’d become my guide dog, leading me into the human world. That was quite a good start. But if you had immediately called for help and been sent to the hospital upon arriving, wouldn’t that have been dreadfully boring? I would have naturally left to find other humans.

"But you didn’t go to the hospital. Your first thought was to go home to your child, to make sure he was safe, but instead, you exposed him to me... How wonderful.

"If you didn’t love him so much, he wouldn’t have to die tonight."

Chaisi knew he was crying, and he knew it wasn’t for himself.

The whimpers and howls from his mother on the ground scared him more than the black shadow piercing his chest.

He used to think he had a superpower: whenever his mom was sad, he could always make her laugh with just a few words. But tonight, that superpower seemed like nothing more than the arrogant dream of a five-year-old.

"Stop screaming for help. Who’s going to save you?

"Didn’t you notice that neighbor who opened his window to look? He’s already closed it and gone back to sleep. Ordinary humans without a Path, who’ve had no contact with a Resident, can’t see me at all... nor can they see the child I have impaled in midair. Right now, you’re just a madwoman crying by the side of the road in the middle of the night."

In the Resident’s grasp, Chaisi was like a piece of meat on a skewer.

With a WHOOSH, it swung him in an arc through the air, right past his mother. After she lunged and grabbed at empty air, it raised Chaisi high once more.

"Oh, my. The two of you crying together is making even me sad. Don’t be like that; I have a merciful streak. How about this? I’ll give you a choice."

His mother stared blankly upward, one eye glistening with tears, but it wasn’t the light of hope.

"The number of Residents who can come to the human world is very, very, very small. Not even one in ten years. Far fewer than humans with Paths. Unfair, wouldn’t you say?"

The Resident smacked its lips—if it had any.

"The conditions to come here are difficult to meet, very strict. And after all the trouble of arriving, one little misstep can send us falling right back into the Nest. Now, I’m going to tell you how to send me back to the Nest."

His mother froze. She stammered, "Wh... What?" 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

"It’s very, very, very simple. You still have a cord at your waist, don’t you? That’s actually a part of me. You just have to cut it, and my Path to the human world will be severed. I’ll naturally return to the Nest. Don’t believe me?

"Well, I can’t help that. All I can say is that for those of us Residents who can come to the human world, if the Path is broken, we fall back into the Nest. It’s that simple. If you don’t believe me, try it."

"And the choice?" his mother asked, clutching her waist and gasping for breath. "What’s the... choice you’re giving me?"

"Oh, whether or not to cut the cord."

After it said this, the air fell silent in confusion for a second or two. Chaisi couldn’t see clearly, but his mother must have been frowning.

"Wh-why wouldn’t I... cut it? You have... a trap..."

"Wrong. I have no trap," the Resident said nonchalantly. "I am a very, very, very trustworthy person. If I allow you to cut the cord, I will absolutely not stop you. Besides, the cord can regenerate. But you’d better think carefully before you cut it."

Chaisi felt himself being lifted higher, dangling beside a massive, flat, black shadow. The Resident seemed to nuzzle him with its face a few times, as if affectionately.

"Your child, however, won’t be let go.

"So your choice is this: one, don’t cut the cord, I stay, and I kill both you and your child. Two, cut the cord, I take your child’s corpse back to the Nest with me, and you save your own life."

Chaisi felt a part of the flat, black shadow that was its face bulge out, pushing his body up slightly—the Resident was smiling.

"I guarantee your child will die tonight. The only difference is whether or not you’ll be buried with him."

Even after so many years, his mother’s sharp, mournful shriek still pierced Chaisi’s heart like a knife.

’He really did die. No matter what his mother chose that night, he was undoubtedly killed by the Resident...’

A voice in his mind that wasn’t his own was trying to convince him. ’Yes, you died that night. Don’t you remember? Your small, cast-covered body hitting the ground with a THUD, falling right before your mother’s eyes...’

’Who says there are few Residents in the human world?’

’One came when I was five, and now another one is here.’

...Of course, he hadn’t died that night.

Chaisi refused to die in that car crash, because if he had, he would have never seen his mother one last time.

To this day, he still remembered the warmth of his mother’s body when she held his shoulders that night.

Chaisi also refused to have died at the Resident’s hands, for slightly more complex reasons. First, the Resident had been severely injured that night and driven back to the Nest, so the sliver of reason remaining in the depths of his mind wouldn’t let him believe it had killed him. Second, if his five-year-old self had died that night, he would have never been lifted from a pool of blood by Uncle Kai.

When he propped himself up, dazed, and tried to turn his head to look at his mother, Kai Luonan covered his eyes.

"Listen... listen to him. Go now," his mother’s last, broken words echoed from the warm darkness of the hand over his eyes. "From now on... Mommy is leaving you with him."

If he hadn’t met Uncle Kai, he would have never known what truly happened to his mother, and there would have been no place left in the world for his soul.

As his consciousness returned to the subway car, Chaisi did not open his eyes this time.

He sat up silently. With intense focus, his five senses were magnified several times over. He followed the faint rustling sounds, the faint, raw, fishy smell of the Resident, the subway driver’s breathing... and drew a mental map of the subway car’s layout.

Sending a Resident back to the Nest was "very, very, very simple."

You just had to cut off the path it used to get here.