Chapter 6: The Negator

Tian Yi headed inland along the route Carl and the other three had taken that morning. They had marked their way with broken branches and arrangements of stones, presumably for fear of getting lost in the woods. Tian Yi had no difficulty following these signs. After a little over an hour, their tracks and markers stopped. This must have been where they caught the badger.

So far, Tian Yi had found very little. There were indeed signs of animals in the dense woods at the island's center, but that was all. He had found nothing else remarkable on the island, and he still could not deduce what their abductors intended.

Tian Yi kept going. Another half hour passed, and the undergrowth grew ever thicker, making every step a struggle. Sweat had soaked through his clothes. He took off his suit jacket and carried it, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and undid two or three buttons below his collar. Even so, sweat still streamed down his back.

Before long, the view suddenly opened up. A broad, level patch of bare earth lay in the woods, perfectly circular. Someone stood at its center, wrapped from head to foot in a black robe, their face hidden by a hood. The exposed chin gave no immediate clue whether this was a man or a woman, young or old, human or ghost.

Tian Yi guessed a ghost, because he could sense nothing. The person before him had no “sin.”

To Tian Yi, it was as though nothing was there at all. Could there actually be someone besides Mirror Face whose existence he could confirm only by sight?

Almost without thinking, Tian Yi said, “Where did you get the means to block my ability?”

The black-robed figure's voice seemed to have been processed through some kind of voice changer. It sounded as though it came from inside a jar. “You've ruled out every other possibility already?”

“Oh? Do you have a better explanation? That you're not human, for instance?”

The black-robed figure said, “For instance, that you're not an ability user at all.”

“Do you know what I am better than I do?” Tian Yi asked.

The black-robed figure continued, “Could it be that you're just an ordinary person who has suffered from mental illness for years and believes he has superhuman powers? That all the information you supposedly ‘sense’ is imaginary, the self-deceiving hallucinations of a mentally ill man?”

Tian Yi said, “An interesting hypothesis. Go on.”

The black-robed figure continued, “Your past, the extraordinary people you know, your unusual experiences—all of it is nothing more than a fleeting dream, a mentally ill man's delusion. In reality, you're simply a bookseller. Almost no one visits your shop, so you spend every day behind your desk, consuming too much caffeine and imagining all sorts of things. After a while, you start believing them. There are no ability users in this world, and you certainly aren't one.”

Tian Yi smiled. “Then why have I ended up on this deserted island, trapped here with a group of total strangers? And why have you, someone who knows so much, appeared before me? If everything is my fantasy, can you read my mind?”

The black-robed figure replied, “Here's another possibility. You're an ordinary tourist who's been stranded on this deserted island too long. Hunger, thirst, and the torment of loneliness have affected your mind, and you've invented all these memories of your past, your extraordinary experiences, your superhuman abilities.”

Tian Yi said, “That hypothesis only explains why I'm on the island. It doesn't answer the other two questions.”

The black-robed figure said, “No, I've already explained. If you're mentally ill, why shouldn't I appear here? Perhaps I'm an image produced by your rational self, a hallucination. I am the cruel reality you've buried deep within your heart. I've come to tell you that your supposed ability is merely your own fantasy, that your memories are false too, that everything you've seen and remembered is a lie.”

Tian Yi's expression suddenly changed. Just as the black-robed figure finished speaking, the “sin” of all eleven people on the coast vanished almost simultaneously.

The black-robed figure seemed to know that Tian Yi could no longer sense them and continued, “What's wrong? Do you still believe there are other people on this island? Is there really anyone here besides you? Are you really an ability user? Is your name… really Tian Yi?

“Could you simply be an ordinary person who's gone mad from being stranded on an island and reinvented himself in his mind as what he considers the perfect man, a man who exists only in his imagination?”

A complex expression crossed Tian Yi's face as he thought. When there are no humans around me, when I can't sense any “sin,” how do I prove I'm an ability user? By the slightly greater physical capabilities of a Paper rank ability user compared with an ordinary person? But that standard is only information in my head too. If I'm mad, the information in my head is worthless as a reference. I believe an ordinary person's limit is running a hundred meters in around ten seconds, but perhaps everyone can actually do that, or perhaps they can't. How can I know? I can't…

Suppose I've already gone mad. Then I can't trust myself, and I have no standard to judge by. Common sense may be nothing more than my imagination. Without an objective reference, I can't prove I'm different from ordinary people. How can subjective reasoning lead to an absolute conclusion?

The black-robed figure said, “Do you understand now?”

Tian Yi said, “If I agree with you, I deny that I'm exceptional and admit that I'm mentally ill. But how can a mentally ill person rationally recognize that fact? A dreamer wakes when he realizes he's dreaming. Does the emergence of this supposed ‘rational self-awareness’ of mine mean my mental illness has cured itself?”

The black-robed figure said unhurriedly, “Then could there be a third possibility? You are merely an imagined person and have no real existence. You could be a figure in a painting, a character in a film or a novel, or a fantasy in someone's mind. Your consciousness is imposed on you by someone else, your words and actions invented by someone else, and your meeting with me now was arranged by someone else too.”

Tian Yi replied, “Then my reaction to what you're saying is under that person's control too?”

The black-robed figure said, “Isn't the purpose of my appearance here quite obvious now?”

Tian Yi said, “To negate my existence? And make me realize it myself.”

The black-robed figure said, “I know you won't believe it. At least, not at this stage.”

Tian Yi sneered. “In other words, as this game of yours progresses, I'll gradually come to believe I'm a fictional character? Then I suppose I'll end up either going mad… or killing myself? Heh… I've seen plenty of endings like that.”

The black-robed figure did not answer, turning instead to walk into the woods.

Tian Yi was hardly going to let the figure leave. He moved forward to seize them, still smiling as he said, “If you want to prove you're just my fantasy, wouldn't it be better to turn into a gust of wind and leave?”

The black-robed figure slipped behind a tree. Tian Yi followed close behind, only to discover that the figure really had vanished as though dissolving into thin air. He looked up, looked down, stamped on the earth beneath his feet, then looked all around. There was no trace of the figure anywhere.

Teleportation? The Flash? Given what had happened, those were the only two guesses Tian Yi could make. Unless… everything the black-robed figure had said was true.

I'm just an ordinary person? There are no ability users in this world, and no one else on this island? Everything is my fantasy?

Tian Yi could find no way to reassure himself now, no way to refute what he'd just heard. He decided to return to the beach first and see what had happened there.