Illusion Report

Chapter 220: Chapter 183: Mai Mingle: This Is Too Real

When Hai Luwei first woke, he couldn’t seem to tell reality from nightmare. Lost in terror and confusion, he struggled desperately to get out of the car, his face slick with sweat and tears, his voice somewhere between a sob and a scream. "Let me go! Let me go!"

"Shh, shh... It’s okay, it’s okay."

Mai Mingle held his shoulders tightly. She took a couple of his frantic blows without letting go, keeping him firmly pressed into the seat. "It’s me, it’s Mai Mingle. It’s all over. You’re okay, I’m here."

Trapped in her arms, Hai Luwei gasped for breath for a moment, and the violent heaving of his back finally began to subside.

After a few seconds, he said softly, "...Mai Mingle?"

"Yes, it’s really me."

Once he’d calmed down a bit, he seemed embarrassed. Mai Mingle let go and patted him lightly on the back a few times. She had a knack for calming children; a man approaching thirty wasn’t all that different from a child, anyway.

"Feeling better? Can you talk?"

Hai Luwei wiped his face hard and looked around. "I... I really got in this car?"

"What happened?"

"I... I saw you get taken away by that empty taxi. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t catch up, so I just started walking down the road... As I was walking, I saw you driving this car, appearing at an intersection..."

"That wasn’t me," Mai Mingle said with a wry smile. "I was in the taxi at the time, completely paralyzed."

"I know that now, but back then, it was like I fell into a nightmare without any warning."

Hai Luwei glanced at the steering wheel in front of him. "I clearly saw you drive up, but when I walked over, you were in the passenger seat, telling me to get in. It was just like in a dream—I didn’t sense anything was wrong, it all felt perfectly logical... After I got in, you said a public Path had opened and we could drive back to Blackmoor City together..."

He started to tremble involuntarily, but his face was a mask of confusion. "Huh? What happened after that? I just remember it was terrifying..."

Just as dreams fade quickly upon waking, so too did his memories. ’Looks like there’s something in the Nest that can control people with dreams,’ Mai Mingle thought. ’And its methods are completely different from a Dream Screenwriter’s.’

’One makes you see a false reality while you’re awake, the other plunges you completely into a dream.’

’Maybe it was one of the opposition... one of the residents who wants to kill me. I’ll have to be careful from now on.’

Mai Mingle gripped his shoulder with one hand and comforted him, "It’s alright, it was just a dream. It’s over now, and you’re perfectly fine. This isn’t a dream. Look, here’s your phone—what kind of dog is that? What’s its name?"

Hai Luwei looked down at the lit screen, a faint smile gracing his lips, as fragile as a puff of smoke. "I guess phones don’t show up in dreams... Um, you might not believe this, but her name is Popsicle."

Mai Mingle was momentarily unsure how to respond. It would probably be rude to say, "like owner, like pet."

Hai Luwei seemed eager to get out of the car. "By the way, what happened to you?" he asked as he climbed out.

Mai Mingle tried her best to give a brief summary, but still ended up rambling on and repeating herself for several minutes. Hai Luwei, however, sat on the curb and listened without any sign of impatience. In fact, her rambling seemed to slowly calm him down.

"It’s a good thing I hesitated and didn’t call you back then."

He looked at his phone, a lingering fear in his voice. "I asked if you knew how to use your phone for light, and you said yes, then turned and left, right? I was shining my flashlight ahead of you the whole time, so I didn’t realize until you were almost across the street that you were actually using the screen’s light."

"Isn’t that how you do it?" Mai Mingle asked, stunned.

Hai Luwei showed her, and a powerful white light instantly lit up from the back of the phone. "See? Phones have flashlights too."

’How amazing.’

Mai Mingle turned the phone over in her hands. She suddenly remembered that the thief who broke into her room seemed to have used his phone for light in the same way. ’Good thing I didn’t remember that a moment ago.’

"I was exhausted back then, and I thought, well, the car was empty anyway, so it didn’t matter what kind of light I used... It’s a good thing I didn’t call you back to teach me how to use the flashlight, or you probably would have melted in that taxi."

Hai Luwei thought for a moment, then added, "When you were sleeping in the apartment building, I was afraid I’d fall asleep too, so I played a podcast I had downloaded. That’s why it was still on the screen. I never thought that would end up being such a big help to you. I guess it’s not wrong to say that ’luck is part of the game.’"

Before Mai Mingle could ask, he held up a hand. "When we get back, I’ll teach you what ’downloading’ and ’podcasts’ are. This isn’t the place to chat."

Mai Mingle smiled at him. "You’re a kind kid. I was afraid you’d pretend you didn’t know me once we got back."

Hai Luwei paused. "That just feels... inhumane."

Compared to the constant danger and torment they had faced, their return to Blackmoor City was remarkably smooth. They didn’t encounter a single resident who wanted to kill Mai Mingle. By the time she came to her senses, she was back in Blackmoor City, but Hai Luwei was gone.

She had landed in the same place as before. Mai Mingle tumbled off the large dumpster and, dragging her injured foot, limped home, hissing in pain with every step.

Other than the old apartment she had lived in for decades, she had nowhere else to go.

Several days had passed since the thief’s visit; he must have given up long ago. Mai Mingle reached out, turned the doorknob, and found it unlocked. She pushed the door open. Sure enough, the room was empty. The air was cool, clammy, and thick. Nothing had changed from before she fell into the Nest.

Whether Mai Mingle existed in this world or not made no difference to anyone.

She walked into the dim, narrow living room and, in a spot she had touched for decades, found the light switch, now smooth and yellowed with age.

The instant the light flickered on, Mai Mingle was lost in a daze, suddenly thinking the past few days had just been a dream. Like this apartment, her life had maintained its stagnant, rigid familiarity as it approached its unavoidable end...

Until she looked down and saw her hands.

Mai Mingle stood stunned in the middle of the room. It was as if these young hands held some kind of mesmerizing magic; she stared at them for a long time, unable to look away—until the phone began to ring, JINGLE-JINGLE. Startled, she rushed over and snatched the receiver.

"Hello?" A small, distant-sounding Hai Luwei came from the receiver. "Are you home?"

"Yes," Mai Mingle said, relieved. "Oh, it’s you."

The last time someone had called her was two or three years ago, she thought.

"I just remembered, you might need me to take you to get your injuries looked at. In Blackmoor City, there are actually some doctors who see Hunters..." Hai Luwei said. "Don’t forget to bring money. They usually aren’t cheap."

"Oh, it’s fine, I can just go to a hospital," Mai Mingle said, a little confused. "There’s no need to find a special doctor who sees Hunters, is there?"

On the other end of the line, Hai Luwei paused.

"A hospital? Do you have ID and health insurance?"

"Huh? Of course I do—" Mai Mingle started, but then stopped short, her words turning into a sharp intake of breath. "Oh, right!"

She was no longer the eighty-six-year-old Mai Mingle on the insurance policy.

"Right," Hai Luwei said, not surprised at all. He had clearly already thought of this. "Your old insurance documents are probably all useless now. If you can only pay with cash, then a Hunter clinic is much more convenient and fair."

’Oh no. By the looks of it, I’ve basically become undocumented... no identity, no insurance, and who knows how long I can even use my bank account.’

’My pension was already meager, but if I can’t even collect that, I won’t be able to pay my rent. I’ll lose even this apartment...’

’I may have returned to reality, but this is a little *too* real.’

’In that case, the matter of the Illusion Report can wait. The urgent problem now is how to make a living.’

The money an isolated old woman had saved was a drop in the bucket compared to the upcoming expenses of a young person.

’To think that at eighty-six, I’d have to figure out a way to earn money.’

"Money..." Mai Mingle sighed to herself.

"Hm?" Hai Luwei grew wary. "You don’t have money?"

Mai Mingle answered honestly, "Not much."

Hai Luwei was quiet for a few seconds, as if he found the situation very tricky. "I’ve never met a Hunter like you before—"

’That’s right, I’m a Hunter now!’

Mai Mingle’s spirits lifted. She suddenly realized that since she was a Hunter, she should make money like a Hunter. And speaking of which, hadn’t she just acquired an Illusion?

"Can you teach me how to figure out an Illusion’s use, and where to find clients?"

As Mai Mingle spoke, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the small tube of lipstick she had gotten from the diner.