Illusion Report

Modern phones are truly amazing. Even a photo of a mirror image came out bright and clear, just like seeing it with the naked eye—Mai Mingle glanced at the picture a few more times, finally convinced. In the reflection, the woman with the glasses really did have black eyebrows.

But... she remembered that the first time she’d seen the woman with the glasses, it had clearly sported a pair of light-brown eyebrows.

The creature’s actual appearance, compared to its reflection in the mirror, showed a difference in eyebrow color... Mai Mingle could think of only one reason to explain this discrepancy.

Between the two pairs of eyebrows—the one on the woman and the one in the reflection—one of them had to belong to the woman who’d been applying makeup.

The black eyebrows in the mirror were, for one, just a reflection that moved with the woman, seemingly impossible to extract. And in terms of color, they couldn’t possibly belong to the woman who’d been applying makeup.

The piece of tissue in Mai Mingle’s pocket, the one with the rules written on it, was still stained with light-brown ink—from the very eyebrow pencil she had used, which belonged to the woman who’d been applying makeup. Common sense dictated that someone with thick, black eyebrows would never use a light-brown pencil for their makeup, right?

So, the woman with the glasses must have somehow "worn" that piece of the other woman’s face—the part with the forehead and eyebrows—on her own. The different color appearing in the reflection had to be a clue.

’It made sense logically, but that did little to calm my nerves.’

Mai Mingle took two deep breaths, but she didn’t relax in the slightest. Instead, a layer of sweat slicked her palms.

’Who could guarantee this wasn’t a death trap, a bomb that would blow me to pieces the moment I touched it?’

She glanced over at the wife again.

"You’re scared?" A few steps away, the wife twisted in her seat and whispered, "Looks like you’ve figured it out. People only get scared when they’re right. It’s fine. Just think carefully about the rules again. Now, go."

’...Risking my own life to test the limits of that rule?’

It was a strange irony. The Illusion had given her a second life, but it had also placed her on a high-wire.

A vast, unfamiliar world unfolded before her, yet the ground beneath her feet was shaky and precarious. Every step was a walk between life and death.

’Maybe I should have considered myself already dead from the start.’

’If you only want to be reborn, but you don’t dare—and aren’t willing—to die first, then how can there be any "rebirth" at all?’

Mai Mingle had made her decision. But before she acted, she carefully scanned the face of every single patron in the restaurant one last time, just in case. Among the diners, there were black eyebrows, dark-brown eyebrows, and even a few pairs of pale-gold and orange-red ones. But the only pair that matched the color of the makeup woman’s eyebrow pencil was on the face of the woman with the glasses.

It seemed she’d have to walk into the fire, no matter what.

She stared straight ahead, not sparing a single glance for the three women waiting for her with bated breath. She walked directly to the other end of the restaurant and turned around.

’I can’t touch the patrons’ faces... If I break that rule, I’ll probably end up just like Xia Tian.’

So, what she had to do next was, in a way, both simple and difficult.

Mai Mingle lowered her head, feigning to look at her phone. She tapped and swiped at it for a moment. To an observer, she might not have looked any different from any other young person staring at their screen. In reality, however, the screen was just a blur at the edge of her vision, framed by cold sweat. Her palms were hot and slick, and she had to grip the phone tightly to keep it from slipping.

Then, in a single, unforeseen moment, she bolted.

Her phone hit the ground with a THUD, pinning the start of that second to the floor. The moment stretched, pulled taut by her sprinting feet, becoming excruciatingly long.

The move she had rehearsed over and over in her mind dissolved into a chaotic white void. As Mai Mingle was about to sprint past the back of the woman’s chair, she fought down the cowardly urge to just keep running and do nothing. Through the rush of wind in her ears, she reached out toward the woman with the glasses.

SLAP. Mai Mingle’s palm struck the woman’s forehead.

Instantly, she curled her fingers, grabbing.

From the moment she dropped her phone and broke into a run to the moment her palm slapped the woman’s forehead, barely a breath had passed. Mai Mingle knew her only chance of success hinged on a single word: speed.

The instant the woman with the glasses reacted—if it so much as turned its head and touched her hand with its cheek—both she and her second life would be over.

Between her clenched fingers, Mai Mingle felt as though she had grabbed a thin sheet of something.

She didn’t dare spare a single glance at the table. Arm raised high, she kept running, not stopping until she nearly crashed into the bar at the far end of the room and finally skidded to a halt.

She bent over, panting. The restaurant, the bar, the servers—everything was washed away to the other side of the world by a roaring wave of white noise.

She listened to the frantic, accelerating beat of her heart in her ears, wondering which thump would be her last. But after a few seconds, the terror slowly receded, and she was still standing.

Mai Mingle didn’t dare look back at the table of three women. She slowly straightened up, raised a trembling hand, and lowered her gaze.

A patch of skin, the part of a forehead bearing two eyebrows, lay in her palm. It was slightly wrinkled, looking almost like some kind of stage prop.

’...I found it. The third piece of the face.’

The wife hadn’t lied to her. This wasn’t a "bomb" after all.

Even though she had been the one to risk it all, Mai Mingle still found it utterly incredible that she was alive.