Illusion Report

It smiled, its eyes crinkling, and said, "If you cooperate, I can even give you a reward."

’That sounds reasonable... but if that were the case, then its husband shouldn’t have worried about the other patrons disagreeing.’

Mai Mingle glanced at the others, then turned back to face the wife.

’They’re wary. They don’t dare offend the woman who’s looking for the faces.’

The wife, apparently understanding her, brushed her long hair behind her shoulder and said, "As a show of good faith, I’m willing to give you a hint right now to find the next face. I can’t tell you the location directly because of the rules. But trust me, this clue is very difficult to spot. If I don’t tell you, you might not find it even an hour from now."

’So, whether or not I agree to cooperate with the wife, I can get a face right now?’

"Go on," Mai Mingle said. ’Those two words shouldn’t break any rules.’

’Regardless of whether the wife was lying, it wouldn’t hurt to listen first.’

Unexpectedly, the wife didn’t speak. Instead, she pulled back her chair, moved past Mai Mingle, and straightened her hair in the mirrored wall on the other side of the restaurant. The husband sighed, seeming both helpless and annoyed.

"Stirring up all this trouble on our wedding anniversary," it grumbled.

Mai Mingle barely registered its words. She followed the wife’s gaze, her eyes landing on the reflection in the mirror.

’...Could one of the clues be in the mirror?’

’Come to think of it, ever since I landed in the restroom, I’ve been dealing with the concept of reflections. It would make perfect sense for a clue to one of the faces to be in a mirror.’

Seeing that Mai Mingle understood, the wife smiled at her and said, "Go on."

Mai Mingle nodded and walked away without a word.

She started from where the six partying youths were, carefully examining the reflections on the mirrored wall: the ceiling, the floor, the central round table, the three tables not against the mirrored wall... The far side of the restaurant looked distant in the reflection, as if another dimension was hidden within the mirror. But nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

As she observed the reflections, Xiaowei and the other five fell silent.

Wherever Mai Mingle walked, their reflected gazes followed. Whenever her eyes met one of their faces in the mirror, she would undoubtedly lock eyes with that patron’s reflection. Yet they made no move, only baring their teeth at her in a grin.

The male patron, however, paid no mind to what Mai Mingle was doing—at least not outwardly—and kept staring at his screen. Her gaze swept past the reflection of the back of his head, his back, and the edge of his laptop screen, moving toward the next table.

Mai Mingle stopped when she was still four or five steps from the next table.

’It seems that as long as I walk around the patrons’ tables and avoid direct eye contact, they won’t bother me. If I meet the gazes of those three female patrons and they invite me to eat, I’ll be in a fatal predicament. The risk is high even if we just lock eyes in the mirror...’

Mai Mingle kept her head turned, her gaze fixed on the far end of the restaurant.

In her peripheral vision, the blurry faces of the three female patrons seemed to be staring at her, unmoving. Two of them sat facing her, their gazes like daggers. The one with her back to Mai Mingle seemed to be watching her relentlessly in the mirror.

’I have to observe their reflections, but I can’t look directly into the mirror...’

’What should I do?’ 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

’Should I get another mirror to look at the reflection of what’s behind me?’

But besides the risk of accidentally making eye contact, Mai Mingle didn’t have a suitable mirror. She even went back to the restroom to rummage through the makeup bag of the woman who had been there, but she only found a tiny compact smaller than her palm. It was too hard to get the right angle to see the reflection behind her clearly.

But as she was coming back from the restroom, an idea suddenly struck Mai Mingle.

"Hey, your restaurant has all these photos of celebrities. You must have a camera, right?" she asked, trying her luck. "Could I borrow it?"

"We don’t have a camera," the waiter replied.

"Now that’s just a lie. If you don’t have a camera, what do you take the pictures with?"

A fleshy tendril pointing at her recoiled slightly, as if in surprise. "With a phone, of course. Who would buy a camera just for that?"

’...This isn’t a trap, is it?’

Mai Mingle blinked a few times.

She remembered her first cell phone, a Motorola flip phone with a tiny screen that glowed blue. She vaguely recalled that it could take pictures, but they were small and blurry.

She had only ever used that phone to make calls. She’d tried sending texts at first but gave up because the keypad was too small for her to see the buttons clearly—let alone taking pictures.

But the smartphones young people used these days were different; the entire front was a screen. She never imagined they could take pictures that were as clear as a real camera’s. Perhaps because she’d never used one, she had genuinely forgotten for a moment that phones could take photos.

’Speaking of a phone, there was indeed one here...’

’Could it be a trap? The rules didn’t say anything about phones...’

Mai Mingle walked back to the dining area in a daze, deep in thought. She glanced at the clock.

’I can’t waste any more time. I have to make a decision. When you don’t have all the information, more deliberation is useless.’

As she picked up the phone from the table, the male patron merely glanced up at her without a word.

’It seems that even after entering the third half-hour, the mission parameters haven’t changed. I can still use any of the restaurant’s resources.’

She had seen young people use smartphones, so she tried to imitate their actions, swiping a few times on the screen. She didn’t know what she’d pressed, but the sobbing face on the display suddenly disappeared, replaced by rows of small, illustrated squares.

’What does all this mean?’

One of the little squares looked like it had a camera drawn on it. Mai Mingle tried tapping it.

The screen went black and then suddenly displayed the restaurant’s interior, startling her. Filled with an ill-timed sense of wonder, Mai Mingle tapped randomly on the screen. CLICK. CLICK. She took several photos of the floor, her thumb, and her shoes.

Once she finally figured out how it worked, Mai Mingle, still keeping her head turned away from the table of women, stood at a safe distance.

She aimed the phone at the mirror behind them and took a single photo. In the picture, the woman with glasses seemed not to have expected this move; the shot perfectly captured her surprised expression, one dark eyebrow raised.

Mai Mingle lowered her head to study the photo for a moment.

She looked up and glanced at the wife. The denizen, as if she had predicted this all along, smiled back at her.

’In the mirror... there really was a clue.’

But Mai Mingle didn’t know if it was a clue that led to a face, or one that led to death.

’If I actually follow that clue to find the next face... wouldn’t that mean I’m breaking the rules?’

’So the wife really did set a trap for me with her words, didn’t she?’