Illusion Report

Mai Mingle had a home, but she couldn’t go back to it.

She walked barefoot through the streets of Blackmoor City in the early morning, chilled to the bone. Her toes, in particular, felt like they were just glued on and might fall off at any moment.

At first, she could still feel the layer of grime coating the soles of her feet, and she would vigorously scrape them clean whenever she stepped on something suspiciously sticky. But after walking for a while, Mai Mingle gave up caring. The streets of Blackmoor City were far from clean; worrying about it was like trying to put out a fire by spitting on it. If she kept fussing, she wouldn’t make it home by dawn.

Just before she hit the screen, Jonah had grabbed her shoulder one last time. It still ached with a searing pain. Even though that young man’s body had been taken over by a bug, his grip was surprisingly strong.

’I’d thought the biggest difficulty in getting home from the Nest would be shaking off Jonah.’

She had slammed into the screen just before Jonah could grab her, and she had indeed returned to the human world. But to her surprise, the place she’d been spat out wasn’t her home.

’To think that at my age, I could still find new ways to suffer.’

Sighing inwardly, Mai Mingle walked past a few drunk men whistling at her from the side of the street, her expression unchanged. "Hey, sweetie! Why are you walking around in your pajamas? Did your boyfriend not let you stay the night?"

Logically, she knew that as a young woman walking alone through the streets of Blackmoor City at this hour, she was in real danger.

Emotionally, however, Mai Mingle couldn’t muster the energy to be afraid.

"Hey!" One of the drunk men actually caught up to her, grabbing her arm. "We’re callin’ you," he slurred. "Don’t go... walking barefoot must suck. Come with me... we’ll give you money."

Mai Mingle stopped, her gaze drifting past him to the building behind him.

"Where’s the pharmacy that used to be here?" she couldn’t help but ask. "It was open for decades. When was it torn down? How did it become a real estate agency? I’ve never even seen this building before..."

The drunk man stared blankly back at it. "...Huh?"

"The old man who ran the pharmacy... he was raising his granddaughter all by himself. Life wasn’t easy for them. I suppose he’s long gone by now..." Mai Mingle shook her head and continued walking. "I haven’t walked this far in seven or eight years. Sigh. To think I’ve lived here my whole life, and now I can’t even recognize it..."

The drunk man stood there, dumbfounded, watching her walk away. He didn’t follow.

If he had actually followed her, Mai Mingle would have been happy to chat. She always felt that voicing her thoughts was the only way to sort them out one by one.

For example, as she walked, she’d been piecing things together. She figured the rules for entering and exiting the Nest were as follows: she slammed into a screen and fell into the Nest. Inside the Nest, she slammed into another screen and fell back into Blackmoor City.

However, the exit location wasn’t necessarily the same as the entry point, nor did she have to emerge from a screen. A moment ago, she had materialized out of thin air and landed on a trash can at a residential building. By the time she’d rolled off the lid, she saw she was still a kilometer from home.

’It seems the Path isn’t very precise. It just dumps you back somewhere in the general vicinity.’

’During this walk home, I wonder how that young man Jonah is doing? How could they let a bug take over a perfectly good kid like that?’

’Besides, people can’t stay in a Nest for more than seven days. Jonah doesn’t have much time left.’

’I have to find a way to look for the Morgan Family... They have that... oh, right, the internet now. Maybe I can go to the library and ask a librarian to help me search for them online?’

Lost in thought, she kept walking until she saw the low-rent apartment building she had lived in for decades. She stopped dead in her tracks.

A police car was parked in front of the building, its emergency lights flashing red and blue against the walls.

Even though it was the middle of the night, a few onlookers had gathered, a sparse crowd of Mai Mingle’s neighbors from the building and other curious locals.

This area had a reputation for being unsafe, with a large immigrant and low-income population, so seeing a police car in the middle of the night wasn’t an unusual sight. Mai Mingle immediately recognized someone in the crowd: a middle-aged woman who lived downstairs from her. She was a notorious busybody, but correspondingly, she was also warm-hearted.

"...The two of them, in the middle of the night, climbing down the fire escape, fumbling around outside the window... it scared me to death!" Mrs. Smith was clutching the police officer’s arm, refusing to let him go. "Saying they were looking for someone? I don’t buy it! I know that old lady on the second floor. She hasn’t been out of bed or left her apartment in years. What, did she suddenly grow wings and fly away in the middle of the night?"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

The female caregiver’s face turned pale with anger. "We’re professional caregivers, not thieves! We only came because we received an emergency call. But the old lady suddenly vanished on her own. Of course we have to look for her!"

The male caregiver, however, was focused on another issue.

He cornered the officer from the other side, repeatedly explaining the situation. "...This was absolutely not a mistake on our part. Please make a proper note of that, and be sure to clarify this with our hospital. Her grandson was watching her at the time; we were about to leave. In terms of care, it was no longer our responsibility. If you find that the old lady really did fall from the building..."

Right. It was only then that a question belatedly dawned on Mai Mingle.

The thief was undoubtedly an Illusion Hunter, or at the very least, connected to the Hunter trade.

He knew she had entered the Nest through the Path. But the other two people present, the caregivers, were ordinary people who knew nothing about the Nest—just like she herself had been, not long ago.