Chapter 420 - 365: Brianna: Gutter and Stars

It was only a brief moment, but for Brianna, a tempest of emotions raged.

'She saw me. Jin Xueli must have seen me, and the long body I'm dragging behind Jacqueline.'

'So disgusting, so hateful. For me to be seen like this, by that clean, beautiful Jin Xueli who's never known a day of suffering... How dare she? How dare she! If she dares to pity me—'

'Worlds apart, worlds apart, worlds apart! I'm just filth, mire that can't bear the light of day. If she says one more hypocritical word, I'll make her wish she were dead.'

'Maybe I should just kill her. Once I kill her, I can wear her skin, pretend to be cheerful and at peace, and get close to Morando again.'

She would rather live in a hell where Morando could only see Jin Xueli, as long as she was the one inside Jin Xueli's body—

'That night at the gas station, she asked me my name.'

'I'll tell her, in the final moment before she dies.'

In that instant, Brianna's mind reeled, battered by an endless onslaught of emotions. It took her a second or two to realize that beneath the head of Jin Xueli in the window was a small mountain of white, doughy flesh stuffed into clothes.

She quickly calmed down, cursing herself for being so ridiculous.

'If I'm going to become this unstable and lose my composure over a future body, it might be better to just kill Jin Xueli sooner rather than later.'

"...What are you?" Brianna asked coldly.

The "Jin Xueli" in the window extended a white, sticky, soft, and plump hand. It pointed to its own face, then to Jacqueline's face, and finally wagged a finger.

'...What does that mean?'

As if to emphasize its point, the "Jin Xueli" pointed to its own face—the one resembling Jin Xueli's—and gave a thumbs-up.

When it gestured toward Jacqueline's face, its thumb turned down. Then it pointed at the door and waved its hands dismissively.

"I can't come in?" Brianna asked.

The "Jin Xueli" nodded.

Brianna slowly narrowed her eyes.

'Not letting outsiders in is understandable. This is the private room Jin Xueli won as a reward... But why point at faces?'

'Could it be that this thing's criterion for entry is based on faces?'

'If it used any other criteria, I might have to use force. But if it's just about the face...'

'No, if it's only about the face, wouldn't Vulture be able to get in easily? Jin Xueli can't be that careless, can she?'

Brianna glanced back at Vulture, who was waiting on the road, and changed her mind.

'Then again, maybe not.'

'Vulture, or any shapeshifting resident for that matter, wouldn't care what Illusion Jin Xueli has hidden away. They wouldn't sneak in to steal it while she's gone; residents are only interested in killing.'

'But residents don't know she's set up here, so they wouldn't be trying to get in, let alone camp out in the room waiting for a Jin Xueli who might never show up—the same logic applies to Hunters.'

'Both Vulture and I only found this place by chance. How could an ordinary person possibly know that Jin Xueli has this room and has hidden an Illusion inside?'

'In any case... before trying to force my way in, I might as well try a softer approach.'

Brianna walked back to the road. Vulture glanced at her. "Wouldn't let you in, huh? What now?"

"You saw Jin Xueli's face in the window, right?" she asked. "Can you transform into just that face?"

"My ability is for taking over a human's identity, not performing an impression."

Vulture scowled. "I need to get close to Jin Xueli herself to turn into her again. Are you going to take me to find her first? Besides, even if I can get in, can you?"

Because she needed to preserve Jacqueline's body, Brianna refrained from slapping him again.

Illusions that could change one's appearance weren't particularly rare in the Nest.

But the world always seemed to work against you. When you didn't need one, you'd always hear about such Illusions popping up somewhere. But now that she actually needed one, Brianna had searched the Nest for a full day and still found nothing.

"Maybe we should just forget it,"

Vulture seemed afraid Brianna would run off and break her promise, so he stuck to her like glue, utterly useless and incredibly annoying. "What's the point of getting the Illusion? Even if you get in, there's no guarantee you can wait for Jin Xueli and kill her."

"Mind your own business, and stop commenting on mine."

"I don't have any business of my own," Vulture said. "My whole purpose in life is to make other people's business my business."

'...He's so damn annoying.'

Perhaps it was force of habit from her time as a Hunter, but now that Brianna had a lead, she naturally wanted to follow it to the end.

The thought of letting it go and not digging deeper was almost unbearable. 'Do I really have to force my way in?'

As she walked, lost in thought, something she saw in her peripheral vision sparked a sudden idea, making her realize it was already December 1st.

'Huh?'

Brianna turned and understood: a large sign stood at the entrance of a roadside beauty salon, reading, "Today Only: First-of-the-Month Discount! December 1st Only."

She was about to turn and walk away, but after taking a single step, she froze.

Brianna stared at the salon's display window and the "before and after" pictures inside—and found herself momentarily captivated.

It was the same woman—impossible to tell if she was a resident or a human—who was originally plain and unremarkable. But in the "after" photo, she had the same facial features, yet they were now striking and prominent, as if a layer of puffy mediocrity had been carved away with a scalpel. Long, milky-white wings sprouted from the back of her head, light and airy, seeming to tremble slightly as they draped over her shoulders.

'...So beautiful.'

She had long forgotten what beauty felt like.

By the time Brianna came to her senses, she found herself walking step by step toward the entrance.

Behind the salon window, a beautician whose head was completely wrapped in bandages, with only a pair of eyes showing, had appeared at some unknown time and had been beckoning to her for who knows how long. A smile seemed to bulge from beneath its bandages as it continued to wave her over, and just like that, it finally lured Brianna into the beauty salon.

'...Isn't this too far-fetched?'

'Even if there is some resemblance...'

'Even if my old self looked like I was the same "type" as Jin Xueli...'

'Or was that just an excuse to come inside?'

Standing inside the shop, Brianna was finally hit with regret. 'I shouldn't have come in. Why did I come in?'

She stood between two rows of bright, clean mirrors, feeling like a test insect bathed in the harsh lights of a laboratory—in fact, what was the difference between her and an insect?

'So scary, so disgusting, I don't want to look.'

Even while still hidden inside Jacqueline's body, she couldn't help but shrink into herself, her gaze fixed on a stain on the floor at the beautician's feet, daring not to move an inch.

She wanted to bury her head, to scream, to cover her eyes, to smash the mirrors on either side, to kill the beautician, to grind the Nest to pulp, to sink into darkness with this world so she would never have to see herself again.

"...Speak up. What kind of style are you looking for?"

The beautician bent down, peering up at Jacqueline's face. "Hmm? Are you a human, or a resident?"

Brianna stood under the intensely bright lights, head bowed, trembling so hard she couldn't speak a single word.

"That's a human shell," Vulture chimed in from the side. "She's inside it. Hmm... would you call her a half-resident?"

"Excellent! Then you should still be able to experience human emotions, right?"

The beautician grabbed Jacqueline by the waist and, with a sudden tug, pulled the body right off Brianna—it was much like a hair salon or beauty parlor in the human world, where it seemed customers ceded all rights to their bodies to the stylist the moment they walked in.

Brianna let out an involuntary cry and collapsed to the floor, keeping her head pressed down.

"Me, I just love those subtle, complex, and ambiguous human emotions... The really strong ones are like overly spicy food. Thrilling for a moment, but they always lack a lingering aftertaste."

The beautician's voice was like water from a dark pool, slowly filling the room, rising higher and higher until it submerged Brianna, drowning her so completely she could no longer see, could barely even feel the long, long torso and back trailing behind her.

"The style I can create for you... will still be you. I can't make you into someone else. But the style you desire... I think that's entirely possible. As long as you can provide me with some satisfactory delicacies."

The beautician lowered its head, leaned close to Brianna, and took a deep breath. The bandages over its nose indented.

"I want to taste some fresh, complex flavors... Subtlety, gloom, desolation, hope, beauty. If you still have a human part, why don't you search for them there?"

Its voice was almost floating as it began to laugh.

Brianna felt her chin being lifted; it seemed to be studying her face intently.

"This is a request that not even a full human could necessarily fulfill. The dull, the simple, the numb, the humans who can only see in black and white... there are as many of them as you could want. What about you? Were you one of them before?"

After a few seconds, the beautician's voice, now holding a note of pleasant surprise, said from a distance, "...Ah, she's crying."

Brianna knew what she was doing.

She lay on the floor, filled with fear and trepidation, and stared up with hazy eyes at the mirror hanging on the wall.

It had always been like this. She was a corpse lying in a filthy, stinking gutter, forcing her head up to gaze, unblinking, at the night sky and the distant stars.

If she didn't look up at the stars, this half-life of hers would have nothing left to support it.

She didn't know how much longer she could keep looking; she didn't know how much longer the starry sky would exist.

She didn't know if she was gazing at Morando, or at a version of herself she could never get close to again.

Brianna could only keep looking up, telling herself that she could once again see the brilliant silver stars in the mirror.

"...Alright, very nice." After an unknown amount of time, she heard a voice say from far away. "Would you like to look in a mirror? I'll go get one for you."

Little by little, Brianna became aware of her body again—her arms, her face, the light. She was still in the beauty salon; she hadn't been submerged. She was lying on the floor, and it seemed something was different.

The matted, filthy clumps of hair that always blocked part of her vision were now gone, replaced by something light and clean.

The beautician crouched down and held up a hand mirror in front of her.

Brianna squeezed her eyes shut reflexively, then, realizing what was happening, slowly opened them and focused her gaze.

...In the mirror, it wasn't entirely the face of her past self; after all, the Brianna of the past was just the embryonic mold she had emerged from.

Nor was it entirely Jin Xueli's face—though there was a definite resemblance.

There were also hints of the face Fu Tailan had worn when he'd transformed into her, but that was also faint.

The face in the mirror was the Brianna of today. It was the night sky, and in that night sky, a distant, cool, dim, snow-like star.

Perhaps she still had a way back.