Temporary Heaven
In a corner of their hearts, they already knew.
This was a test. Tiss had to be an illusion.
They needed to run a reality check, confirm the truth, and get out of here.
Both Siwoo and Sia carried artifacts of their own for exactly that purpose. All they had to do was take them out, whenever they wanted.
"Oppa, wait."
But Sia hesitated to use hers.
"Just a little longer… let's use it in a little bit."
Siwoo felt it — the desperate, aching wish in his sister to hold that image of Tiss, exactly as she had been, in her eyes for one more minute. One more second, even.
The truth was, he felt the same. So he couldn't bring himself to be cruel about it. He let his little sister have what she wanted, and stayed quiet.
The past two years. Every scrap of free time Siwoo and Sia had left after training, they had poured into searching for Tiss.
She's alive somewhere. She has to be.
If they just kept looking, they would find some trace of her in one of the Areas. They had believed that. They had endured on that belief.
But even with the Order's resources behind them, they hadn't found so much as a footprint.
At the time, Tiss had been hiding her existence perfectly out on the outskirts — in Area 7 — using her mimicry. They had no way of knowing that.
To the two of them, the silence meant something else.
Tiss was… dead.
It had been a massive explosion. Strong enough to shatter the barrier. Strong enough for monsters to pour through the gap. No matter how clever she had been, no matter how much they had relied on her, Tiss had still been a child — the same as them. There was no way anyone survived something like that. They had already, in some quiet part of themselves, halfway given up.
And then Tiss appeared in front of them, looking exactly as she had in those days.
"Unnie…! Unnie…!"
"Tiss…!"
Tiss welcomed the two of them as they came to her in tears, gathering them up with a warmth that felt painfully real.
"Why are you two crying all of a sudden? Did something happen? It's okay. I'm right here. Come on — no more tears. Blow your noses for me?"
The Tiss looking down at her younger siblings with those gentle eyes was still, in every way, the dependable girl they remembered. The voice. The warmth in her gaze. All of it was so vividly, unmistakably their unnie, alive.
The more they talked, the more solid the fantasy became.
The Reunion Illusion reproduced the Tiss in their memories without a single flaw. Before they knew it, the scenery around them had shifted into the orphanage they remembered. Even their own bodies had gone back to how they had looked as children.
"All right, children — the snack time you've been waiting for is here."
"What's today's snack, teacher?"
"Today it's strawberry tart cake and yogurt."
"Woooow!"
The teacher and their friends had slipped into place among them as if they had always been there.
Maybe the last two years of suffering had been a dream. Just an unusually long nightmare. Maybe when they woke up, yesterday's today would be waiting for them all over again.
They didn't want to wake from this — from the orphanage's ordinary days, spent as their smaller selves. Tiss was here. Their teacher was here. Their friends were here. Everything was here.
They wanted to stay in this paradise… forever.
But the happiness didn't last.
"You two… you can't smile, can you."
The one who sensed the change wasn't Siwoo or Sia, who wanted so badly to remain inside the dream.
It was Tiss.
In the middle of sharing snacks with everyone, Tiss rose from her seat with a bitter look on her face.
"Tiss…?"
She didn't stop at Siwoo's call. She walked through the orphanage, toward the door that led outside.
Creeeak.
She opened it and reached her hand beyond the threshold — and the hand that crossed outside vanished like a mirage.
"Unnie?"
She closed the door and came back. Her hand was whole again, as if nothing had happened.
Tiss was smiling. And at the same time, she was crying.
They cried for a long time, clinging to the Tiss who still looked exactly as she had then.
Tiss stroked their hair with a gentle smile.
"I was wondering why I suddenly found myself somewhere strange when I came to my senses… To think I was an illusion all along."
The face of the Tiss telling them the truth held a warmth that wanted, at least for this moment, for the siblings in front of her not to be sad.
They had known. They just hadn't wanted to hear it from her mouth. The cruelest truth they had least wanted to hear came spilling out through her lips anyway.
"N-no, Unnie, that's—!"
The warmth they felt in the arms of the unnie they had missed so terribly was only an illusion. Their hearts were already shaking too hard to accept that.
Tiss told them it was all right, and squeezed Sia's and Siwoo's hands tight.
"You've gotten so big. You both look like adults now. Quite a bit of time's passed since that day, hasn't it?"
"Two years."
"You grew this much in two years? You both worked so hard."
Looking at the two of them, so much taller than they had been two years ago, the Tiss inside the illusion praised them for growing up well, her face full of pride.
At those words, Sia burst into tears and buried herself in Tiss's arms — in an unnie who was now so much smaller than she was.
"Unnie…! Tiss Unnie…!"
"I worked hard. Just like you told me — I did everything I could. I gave everything I had."
Even through her sobbing, Sia poured it out in broken pieces, as if wringing a knot from the deepest part of her chest — everything that had happened in the Order.
Tiss listened in silence, and carefully stroked the hair of the girl wailing like a child.
"I'm so glad you both grew up safely. And I'm sorry I couldn't be there with you."
"…You don't have to be sorry."
The apology that came from Tiss's mouth cut deeper than any wound from training. Deeper than any pain taken in a fight against a monster.
"Go on. If an illusion like me held you back, how could I ever call myself your big sister?"
The illusion of Tiss gently lifted Siwoo and Sia as they tried to sink to the floor. It was so unbearably her that the tears they had managed to stop started falling all over again.
"Unnie, I love you. I really missed you."
"I love you too. Both of you. Siwoo and Sia."
Tiss held Sia and patted her back, and took Siwoo's hand in a warm grip.
"Siwoo. Take care of Sia for me."
"Don't worry. I'll protect her. I swear I will."
"Mm. You look reliable."
They didn't want to let go.
And yet, if they refused the request of the Tiss standing in front of them now, everything they had done until this moment would feel like it had lost its meaning.
"Don't worry. If it were the real me, I'd be living just fine somewhere."
Was that the illusion telling them the words they most wanted to hear — or was it something Tiss would say because she really was alive out there, somewhere?
The Siwoo and Sia of this moment had no way of knowing.
"Siwoo, Sia. See you on the outside."
"Yeah… see you on the outside, Tiss."
"S-see you on the outside, Unnie."
And so the two of them left Tiss behind and stepped out of the cabin.
They forced their feet forward through the tears, steps that did not want to leave, and walked into the blizzard.
Forward. Forward again. One step at a time.
Like earth hardening after rain, Siwoo and Sia's hearts, having faced the illusion of Tiss, grew a measure more solid than before.
Around the time the cabin was fading from view, a faint light in the distance began drifting slowly toward them.
The instant it touched their hands—
Siwoo and Sia woke from the illusion.
I knew from the moment I opened my eyes.
This wasn't real. I would have known even without the sense of wrongness ringing warning bells in my head.
A faint light glittered far beyond the canyon, and a cabin sat planted right there as if it were telling me to come closer.
Someone lives in a place like that? Isn't that a little too convenient?
The fact that it hadn't even reached Shan already meant this hallucination had shown up in front of me with its true nature fully exposed.
Shan, what are you seeing right now? All I can see is a snow-covered mountain.
A snow-covered mountain…? Uh, from where I am, this place looks huge. Like an auditorium?
Shan and I were looking at different landscapes.
And this was a test.
Moving this many people outside the Area — into snowfields that weren't even humanity's land anymore? Even Baba Yaga, for all her power, couldn't pull that off.
Which meant, given Baba Yaga's nasty sense of humor, if she wanted to screen a crowd this size, there was only one spell left that fit.
It's the Reunion Illusion.
The way a magic trick stops looking mysterious the moment you know how it works, illusion-type abilities get a lot easier to handle once you've seen through what they actually are.
And mental interference — hallucinations included — was the one category I had prepared for more thoroughly than anything else.
I'd bled and sweated to build up every survival skill I had, mimicry included, just to get inside the Area. What if a single hit of hypnosis stripped my identity down to the bone? There wasn't a more hollow, more miserable way to go than that.
I'd already built a mental barrier to block psychic attacks. I'd switched it off for the exam, but it was there. And I'd gone a step further — I'd absorbed the Essence of Upper-grade Hazards that used mental power, brainwaves, and telekinesis as weapons. Things like Mental Eaters, Elder Minds, Eyeballs.
Which meant I could do this, too.
Snap!
I flicked my fingers, and my vision warped in an instant.
Crash!
The cabin the illusion had built came down as if a pane of enormous glass had shattered. The wind vanished. The bridge vanished. The cliff vanished. When it was over, the only thing left was me, floating in empty air.
I couldn't throw a mass hypnosis over hundreds of people the way Baba Yaga could. But taking an illusion whose structure I'd already mapped and turning it around? That much, I could do.
Seen through.
Shan, I'm done on this end.
C-cleared it, huh. Th-then are we heading out right now?
No?
Control of the illusion space had passed to me. Which meant this place was basically a lucid dream I could customize however I wanted.
In that case… we'd come all this way. No harm in enjoying ourselves a little before we left, right?
From here on, I was turning this place into my own playground.
"Eheheh. This is nice."
Nice, nice.
Hallucination. Dream. Lucidity. We were free of all of it.
From chocolate waterfalls to mountains buried in sweet candy, the place was a sugar-soaked paradise that put Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to shame. Glittering stars and aurora shimmered overhead, and far off, an emerald sea unrolled like something out of a painting.
A single clap, and every kind of delicacy that melted the moment it hit your tongue appeared in front of me with a flourish. King crab, crayfish, veal tenderloin steak — the kind of luxury food I'd only ever dreamed about. I ate as much as I wanted.
Gulp, gulp.
"Ahhh. This. This is what living is for."
I even drank myself silly on alcohol I hadn't touched once since ending up in this body. I didn't get full. I didn't get drunk. I could enjoy it without limit. If this wasn't heaven, what was?
A small part of me did wonder if I was overdoing it a little.
So what?
Enjoy it when you can. Rest when you can. That's the way to live. Probably.
Munch, munch.
Shan had stacked up an entire mountain of snacks and was tearing through it like Pac-Man, drunk on pure happiness. If I'd pointed an emotion camera at her face, the happiness reading would have been a flat one hundred.
The cost?
Nothing to worry about. The people running the exam would be the ones paying. It felt like swiping an unlimited black card for everything in sight.
And if I got caught?
Obviously, I'd already covered that. I wrecked the outside "eyes" first so they couldn't peek in, then set a loop playing of me taking a leisurely rest inside the cabin. It did waste a little extra mana to keep the illusion running, but they weren't going to halt the whole exam over one person — and once it was over, they'd have no way of telling who'd done it.
I was confident I wouldn't get found out, so I let Shan fully materialize and run around as much as she wanted.
"Adorable."
Just watching Shan bounce around at stuffed-animal size — small enough to fit in my arms, not the enormous bulk I'd seen at the ritual site — was enough to pull a smile out of me.
Kyaaaa!
Splash!
Shan rode a canoe made of candy down the chocolate waterfall and plunged straight off the bottom.
Th-this is fun!
A moment later she bobbed back up looking like a round chocolate ball studded with almonds, a huge grin plastered across her face.
How generous this temporary heaven was.
After playing to her heart's content, Shan came running over to me and burst out in an excited rush.
T-Tiss, this place is the best! I can eat and eat and I never get full. I love it.
"If there's anything you haven't eaten yet, eat it now."
Time was just about up.
A-already?
Nnh.
Still coated in chocolate, Shan looked up at me with a face full of regret, eyes welling.
"The examinees who beat the trial are starting to wake up, one after another. They're sorting out the ones who failed the illusion, too."
I wanted to play longer myself, but if I wasn't careful I might get classed as a failure who never overcame it.
A shame, but this was as far as we went.
"Shan. Let's look at the Snow Mountain scenery one last time before we go."
Okay.
I soothed the reluctant Shan and scooped her into my arms, and we stepped out of the cabin.
Woooow…!
With the blizzard completely gone, the view of Snow Mountain was nothing short of spectacular.
An illusion, as a rule, hits harder when it's built from the most intense memory a person has. This one was Baba Yaga reconstructing a journey from her own past — the time she had gone with the Hero Party to meet the dragon of Snow Mountain.
It's beautiful… I've n-never seen a view like this.
Even Shan, who always said staying home was the best thing in the world, stared with glittering eyes, as if the sight of nature on this scale had genuinely moved her.
"Shan. Someday, let's come here for real. On our own feet. Not as an illusion."
But… I c-can't leave Tiss's body.
"Then we just have to find a way, right? There might even be an Essence for something like that."
I didn't actually know how a parasite living inside a body was supposed to come out. But if we didn't give up, there would be a way. Baba Yaga and the Hero Party had made miracles. Why couldn't we?
I wanted to believe that, at least for now.
Yeah…! S-someday. For sure.
We used every last scrap of the time we had left, walking the Snow Mountain slowly, like we were out for a stroll.
The faint light in the distance drew closer and closer.
And then, at some point—
A pure white radiance wrapped around us and led us back to reality.
"You cheeky little Modubu, you. Well? Have you had your fill of consequence-free pleasure?"
Huh.
When I opened my eyes, there wasn't another examinee in sight.
Just one person — Baba Yaga, arms folded, waiting for me to get up.
T-Tiss… we're f-fucked…
Yeah. We are.