Jin Xueli After Life and Death

People said that when you died, the memories of your life flashed before your eyes like a revolving lantern; Jin Xueli now knew that this was neither entirely wrong nor entirely right.

She lay on the exhibition hall's icy floor, yet she felt hazily as though she had become a little boat. The ropes tying her to the world had come loose, and she was slowly drifting out onto a mist-shrouded river.

Sometimes the mist scattered, revealing scenes from when she had first arrived in Blackmoor City. Back then, she had shared a semi-basement apartment with someone, and through the living room window she could see shoes and trouser legs passing back and forth along the street.

Sometimes she saw her first customer, examining that Phantasm over and over beneath a desk lamp. The light fell into the customer's eyes, illuminating both the eyeballs and the suspicion until they turned translucent.

The more recent her experiences-opening the passage, attracting a stalker, being killed-the more they seemed like things that had happened to someone else, mere flat, washed-out accounts she could not see through the mist. Moments from long ago were more vivid instead: carrying out the onion and meat pie her mother had baked, always going over to a classmate's house in seventh grade... If she opened the door and stepped inside, she could go home.

Drawn by those distant memories, Jin Xueli drifted farther away. She could barely hear the desperate rattling in her own wounded throat anymore.

Her head lay in a pool of blood, which spread into her own River Styx.

"Die," a voice said from above, hissing as though leaking air.

Yet that farewell called Jin Xueli back a little.

...How had it come to this?

She had called a taxi, paid her fare, and followed the instructions scrupulously throughout the ride, never daring to step out of line. By the time she got out, even her neck ached.

She had pretended not to see the female resident crawling out of the elevator on the right. After finally making it into the exhibition hall on the first basement level, she had kept her breathing still and her attention focused, poised to act...

She had done everything, done all she could, only to end up like this. She could not accept it.

A dark figure bent down, seemingly kneeling on the floor to examine her.

Jin Xueli could no longer make out details. All she saw were dim outlines: the rounder shape was a head, and the section connected to it was a neck; the dark shape jutting from that neck was the hunting knife she had driven into its throat.

As the dark figure opened its mouth to speak, the hunting knife buried deep in its neck bobbed up and down, trembling slightly. The knife had sliced open its windpipe, and air hissed out between its words. "...I really do have to thank you. That finally reminded me-what I forgot was the Hiking Backpack."

Even if Jin Xueli could still think, nothing of it showed on the outside. Blood had stained her neck black and red, as though her neck had been erased. Her body had fallen silent and lay utterly motionless.

When she jumped onto the first taxi, she must have accidentally stepped on the "get copied" square.

She still remembered that, the moment she lifted her foot, someone had yanked hard on the Hiking Backpack on her back, nearly pulling her over backward. Jin Xueli had steadied herself and turned around, only to see her own face-without any strange distortion, its skin smooth and fine, just like looking in a mirror.

She froze.

"When did you copy me?" the other "Jin Xueli" demanded first, glaring at her. It looked as though it wanted to shove her, yet was a little afraid to touch her. "Get away from me!"

So the words "get copied" on the square really meant nothing more than that she would be copied?

That did make sense. Copying something did not necessarily mean damaging the original...

Apart from the additional copy, Jin Xueli could feel nothing wrong anywhere in her body. If anything troubled her most, it was this: "Jin Xueli" seemed to have inherited both her body and her mind, and now wholeheartedly believed itself to be the original.

...Then how could she be absolutely certain she was not a resident? She was just as convinced that she was the real Jin Xueli.

No, that was wrong. It was impossible. The one in front of her was the resident, and it was about to go to the Museum of Modern Art in her place.

There was one crucial piece of evidence proving that she was the real Jin Xueli: the backpack, hunting knife, and phone were still with her and had not been copied along with her. The other one had nothing on it at all.

"I was so focused on how to jump onto the taxi that I forgot to pick up the Hiking Backpack. I'd been standing in the square the whole time. It was too heavy on my back, so I put it on top of my feet..."

The dark outline of a face hovering before her spoke, leaking air. "But I forgot what happened afterward that made me leave the backpack behind, because I gave that memory to the driver."

Even now, "Jin Xueli" apparently still did not believe it was a resident.

It paused here, as though remembering something. "I originally wanted to ask you about the fourth Passenger Instruction-could I raise my head once I'd finished paying? But you're a resident. What consequences could there be if you didn't follow the Passenger Instructions...? Forget it. It doesn't matter. I got out just fine anyway. I never expected you to deliver my things, too."

...She could not accept this.

Back then, she had not dared keep grappling with "Jin Xueli," afraid she might step into a penalty square. She had called another taxi, paid the fare with memories, and followed behind "Jin Xueli" with her head lowered the entire way, getting out at the Museum of Modern Art.

Whatever it did along the way, she did too. At last, she followed it into the underground exhibition hall, seized her chance, and plunged the hunting knife deep into its throat.

Jin Xueli had heard that residents could not be killed. Even if they died temporarily, they could regenerate somewhere else.

But residents were affected by restrictions imposed by rules beyond life and death, so an attack would still have some effect-she simply had not expected the effect of driving a knife into a resident's neck to amount to nothing more than a leaking windpipe.

She had let go in a daze, staring at "Jin Xueli."

When it spat, nothing came out of its mouth, which resembled a dried-up black hole. Now, with a knife in its neck, it merely hissed air and shed no blood.

It also stood where it was, rolling its eyes down to look at the hunting knife, then lifting them to look at her.

For a second or two, both of them forgot to move.

"Jin Xueli" slowly bared a familiar set of teeth at her. She had brushed each one countless times, studied their color and shape in the mirror, and could recognize them at a glance-yet now they were in someone else's mouth.

...How repulsive.

"A knife was stabbed into my neck," the resident said matter-of-factly after those one or two seconds. "Since you copied my appearance, your neck should be stabbed open too."

As soon as it finished speaking, Jin Xueli's neck opened into a mouth.

...Why? How could this happen?

It was so cold outside her body. Once her blood vessels and muscles tore apart, it felt as though a splash of ice water had been poured through the split; the pain only registered afterward.

The sudden chill in her neck was immediately swept away by scalding blood, which spattered the face of the "herself" opposite her. Jin Xueli clamped one hand over her torn neck, instinctively trying to press the wound shut, but blood kept bubbling out between her fingers.

With her dying consciousness in fragments, she collapsed to the floor.

Her eyelids froze half-open, and her soul drifted into the deep, thick mist.

Jin Xueli fought back the hair-raising discomfort and fear, pressing one hand tightly against her neck and gripping the hunting knife's handle with the other.

Her palm was slick with cold sweat, and her legs were too weak to hold her up. She could only slide slowly down to sit on the floor. A few steps away lay a corpse that looked exactly like her, its eyes beneath half-open lids already resembling the rigid bellies of dead fish.

"Jin Xueli" had not stabbed deeply and had missed the vital areas. Perhaps that was a blessing amid misfortune.

She knew very well that when a sharp blade pierced the body, pulling it out could cause a worse wound and massive bleeding. The first rule of first aid was "never remove anything from a wound." Sometimes a blade embedded in the body could even temporarily plug the wound and reduce blood loss.

The crucial difference that explained why "Jin Xueli" had died from the same injury while she was still alive was probably that the hunting knife had plugged the bleeding. So residents were not impossible to kill after all-or at least, "Vulture" could be killed.

It was just that the logic behind killing it was a little convoluted: she had to make it copy her into a second self first, then, after suffering a fatal injury herself, remind it to copy that fatal injury over. Only then would it die.

Even an injury that merely looked fatal would do.

Although she knew she would not die, having a knife in her throat was still torture on her nerves. Besides, she could not call an ambulance or go to the emergency room in the Nest, much less climb a tall building with a knife in her neck and jump off it to return to Blackmoor City for treatment...

She would have to do it herself.

She found a spare T-shirt in her backpack and bound it tightly around her neck and the knife, so tightly that she struggled to breathe and stars kept flashing before her eyes. Gently feeling for the tip beneath her skin, she located it and readied her fingertips-as soon as she pulled the knife out, she had to press the wound shut immediately, without risking massive bleeding.

Jin Xueli knew the Nest was unsafe and that she would probably have to administer first aid to herself many times. But even though she had taught herself basic first aid and stocked her bag well, an injury like this was truly beyond anything she had imagined.

Even she did not know how she managed to stop the massive bleeding and clumsily stitch the knife wound closed-it was nothing short of a miracle.

Despite the successful "operation," Jin Xueli still could not hold on and lost consciousness for a while.

When she woke, the exhibition hall on the first basement level was still utterly silent. She and her own stiffened corpse lay slumped beside the giant candle; when she listened closely, it was like a tomb.

Jin Xueli rested for a long time before slowly getting to her feet.

Her serious injury, lingering fear, and exhaustion left her wanting only to go home as soon as possible, curl up beneath her covers and sheets, smell the familiar jasmine laundry detergent, and sink into a long, deep, sweet sleep.

But it was not time yet.

Jin Xueli was a little astonished herself. She had never expected the prospect of a Phantasm to draw such almost inhuman tenacity out of her. What ordinary person could survive a knife wound to the throat?

She walked up to the candle step by step, hesitated, and placed her hand against it.

A line of small text immediately appeared beside her palm: 2009.4.22.

...In other words, the history at this point had happened on April 22, 2009?

She was standing several meters from the candle's top. Why did this particular point represent April 22, 2009?

After thinking for a moment, Jin Xueli walked to the very top of the candle and touched it. Sure enough, she saw her birthday: 1998.9.29.

So that was how it worked... Her gaze traveled along the candle.

In other words, the stream of time enclosed within the candle began with her birth and continued up to the present day of her life. There was no future inside the candle.

Was that because the future was chaotic and undetermined, making it impossible to foresee?

Although the failure of her greedy wish to foresee the future left her somewhat disappointed, from another perspective it was also a peculiar comfort: since fate had not already been decided, she could still choose what to do and where to go. A person was not a little insect trapped in a transparent cage, with every possible path already bounded.

In this world that caught people unprepared and left them bewildered and directionless, they still had this tiny measure of control over themselves.

Of course, Jin Xueli was not so conceited as to believe the Nest would specially tailor a Phantasm for her. Whoever touched the candle, it would presumably display history starting from that person's birth.

She walked a little farther along, estimated that she was close, and placed her hand on the candle again, searching.

2026.5.2. She successfully located the point when she had first encountered her harasser, Anthony.

Jin Xueli had an idea.

She crouched down and found an ignition switch beneath the metal trough. With a click, flames sprang up beneath the candle.

She wanted to try snuffing this whole thing out at its beginning.

All the sleep debt I racked up rushing around and wearing myself out lately has come knocking now that I'm finally back... No matter how much coffee I drink, I'm sleepy from the moment I open my eyes in the morning until I go to bed at night... By eight, I really can't take it anymore and have to sleep...