When Jin Xueli first made out the words behind her, alongside her terror, she actually felt a tiny trace of relief-
"I noticed you'd come back to life long ago."
Her own voice drifted eerily up from behind and above her head, like a cloud of thick miasma. "You're so easy to fool. That's nothing like me."
Great. Jin Xueli pivoted on her knee, twisting around as she thought, Thank goodness its first sentence was a waste of breath.
So what if it had noticed long ago? No matter what, the two of them would eventually have to fight to the death.
She had already braced herself mentally, but when "Jin Xueli" suddenly appeared in her field of vision, her breath still caught involuntarily, as though someone had shoved her head-on.
Compared with the "Jin Xueli" she remembered seeing, the resident now looked even more alive, more real: the forehead with beads of sweat glimmering faintly in the firelight, a lock of short golden-brown hair stuck to its temple; the fine hairs on its cheeks, the hot breath puffing from between its lips...
Those eyes shone as though nothing else remained.
This was Jin Xueli, this was her very self-yet her very self was standing outside her body, raising an arm high and bringing a dark shape crashing down at her.
At the last possible moment, Jin Xueli managed to fling herself aside. A tremendous crash exploded beside her ear, and a deep chunk was gouged out of the exhibit; amid flying wood splinters, she narrowed her eyes and hurriedly rolled away, an unknown number of splinters already embedded in her face and beneath her hands.
"Hurry up and die! There can only be one Jin Xueli in this world!"
The unfamiliar shouting, in her own voice, echoed through the exhibition hall in waves; with a heave, "Jin Xueli" pulled a fire axe from deep inside the exhibit made of wooden slats.
When...?
Before she could even finish forming the question, Jin Xueli sprang up and ran-but in her panic, she forgot that she had already taken off her shoes. With only socks on her feet, she had almost no traction on the slick exhibition hall floor.
Just as she was about to fall flat, she simply launched herself forward in a dive-ever since reopening her eyes, she seemed to have spent more time sprawled and rolling on the floor than standing.
With a dull clang, the fire axe bit deep into the floor tiles, only a step away from her.
Never in her life had Jin Xueli taken off a sock so quickly.
Before the fire axe could be pulled free, she yanked off her sock and flung it at her other face, aiming for the eyes; like any normal person, the resident had no desire to touch a sock with its eyeballs and hastily turned its head aside.
Jin Xueli would have loved to keep going, but there was no chance to take off her other sock and throw it too-the resident had already surged forward a step and swung the axe high above her.
Almost instinctively, she kicked the resident in the ankle.
After copying Jin Xueli, the resident had nothing more than an ordinary human body. Now, kicked in the leg bone with another person's full strength, it immediately staggered back two steps in pain; Jin Xueli seized the chance to roll over and scramble up, running forward with one foot steady and the other slipping.
Yet as she ran, she could not help thinking back to the ankle she had just kicked.
She had never considered this before: what shoes was the resident wearing?
She already knew that when residents copied someone, they could not copy things such as backpacks and phones along with them. What about clothes, then? Shoes?
In that glimpse at the critical moment between life and death...
"Wait!"
Jin Xueli knew perfectly well that with one foot bare, she could never outrun the resident; besides, the more chances she gave it to speak, the more danger she would be in. She hurriedly turned her head and called, "What are you wearing?"
The other "Jin Xueli," pursuing her relentlessly with gritted teeth, froze briefly at the question, but was not distracted. Instead, it brought the axe crashing down first; only after Jin Xueli narrowly dodged it did it laugh breathlessly. "Trying to waste words and buy yourself time?"
"Residents can't copy backpacks, and they can't copy clothing either!"
Terrified that it would catch up again, Jin Xueli hurriedly shouted, "You copied my appearance, but the shoes you're wearing are still your own. You must have the memory of what clothes and shoes I put on before coming to the Nest today, right? Look down and think. Do the clothes in your memory match what you're wearing?"
"Jin Xueli" paused in a daze, and actually looked down at its clothes.
Even residents of the Nest could not go naked. Generally, they had to wear something.
This one, perhaps because it was a "Vulture" and had to be ready to turn into someone else at any moment, was also wearing unremarkable black trousers and black shoes that would go with almost anything-Jin Xueli could hardly be blamed for never noticing its clothing; when your own face emerged in the darkness, it was not easy to pay attention to what shoes the other person wore.
"They do match," it said clearly when it raised its head again. "When I enter the Nest at night, I always wear black clothes and black shoes to avoid attracting attention. If you're trying to fool me with that, you're being ridiculous."
Holding the fire axe in one hand, it gave a little kick of its toe.
"I can even tell you that I bought these shoes on sale at Bloomingdale's, because I thought that for things I'd wear in the Nest, good quality was enough. There was no need to pay full price for a nice-looking style."
This time, it was Jin Xueli's turn to freeze. That line of thinking really was her own; she could even recall several pieces of clothing she had bought for exactly the same reason.
"What about you?" The resident smiled at her, a lock of hair stuck to its lips, framing its teeth. "If you really have my memories, you'll find that your clothes are the ones that don't match."
Jin Xueli involuntarily lowered her head, her gaze settling on her khaki sweatpants.
She remembered that these were indeed the trousers she had put on before jumping out of the window... but where had these trousers come from?
Most people could more or less remember where they had bought their clothes, yet these sweatpants felt as though someone else had only just slipped them onto her a few seconds ago, so unfamiliar that they left her bewildered.
Why don't I remember buying these trousers?
"After residents copy the original person, they seem to improve and smooth out the memories, fixing details that don't fit the facts and patching the holes... That's why you believe so firmly that you're the real me."
While she stood with her head lowered, staring blankly at her trousers, the other "Jin Xueli" had slowly drawn closer; its voice, hot breath, smell of sweat, and feet in their black shoes were encroaching on her existence, bit by bit.
"Residents can't be killed. I've heard that."
It said softly, "Still, I'll only feel safe once I've taken away your ability to move... I imagine there must be a time limit on how long you can copy a human, right? If that time runs out before you return to Blackmoor City to replace me, you should turn back into a resident, shouldn't you?"
Wait-what is it saying?
As though something had quietly pricked the depths of her mind, a speck of light the size of a grain of rice shone through; but it only flashed for an instant before a heavier, more pressing shadow obscured it.
She neither heard nor saw it-as though some intuition beyond the five senses had guided her, the instant the fire axe swung down toward her forehead, Jin Xueli abruptly ducked low and lunged forward, wrapping her arms around the resident and knocking it off the ground.
The arm the resident had tensed to swing down struck her hard across the ear and head; but the deadliest thing, the fire axe, finally grazed past her shoulder, slipped free, and crashed onto the floor tiles nearby.
The two fell to the floor together, the back of the resident's head striking it with a sound that made her insides clench.
"You copied my appearance," it nevertheless managed to say with difficulty, "so you also-"
Before it could finish, Jin Xueli pulled out the towel she had tucked into the back of her waistband and shoved it against its mouth.
The resident swung its head from side to side, twisting away. Though she failed to stuff the towel inside, she stopped it from finishing its sentence.
Jin Xueli dared not let go. Gritting her teeth against the fists striking her body again and again, she stretched the long towel taut between her hands and seized a moment when the resident's lips and teeth parted to press it deep into its mouth-the towel stretched across her other face like a rope, forcing its tongue deep into its mouth and leaving it unable to utter a single clear word, only muffled sounds.
"I... I think I get it..." Looking at the face distorted beneath the towel, she said softly, "I think I understand your attack pattern now. You really are the resident."
Yesterday, after getting to the hotel and eating, I wrote for a while longer, but I really couldn't hold out and fell asleep... I got up early this morning to keep going; otherwise, I kept feeling guilty.
This time I got a freebie out of Qidian for the hotel. Aren't they holding a promotional event for the Joy of Life production team? I have nothing to do with that, but I slipped myself in along with it, kind of like stowing away... How should I put it? I keep feeling guilty, as though they'll check the accounts afterward and make me pay for the room. Someone from Qidian told me Mao Ni was staying there too, so, rounding things off, I was on the same level as Mao Ni.
With rounding that extreme, you could step from the Huangpu River all the way to Tokyo...
(End of chapter)
Before you continue