The two strands of memory were like neighboring rivers, gradually nearing their confluence after the earth between them dissolved. Each river reflected the other's splashes, making it impossible to distinguish memory from reality.
Jin Xueli lay on the floor. Above her field of vision was the belly of an enormous candle.
For a moment, she could not remember why she had fallen: had her left shoulder been severed? Or had her throat been torn open?
All she knew was that she seemed to be losing a great deal of blood.
After such a grievous injury, although her bodily systems had not yet gone into shock, her consciousness was already on the verge of slipping away.
"I thought about it some more, and I still think you're the resident after all."
Her own voice sounded a few steps away, breathing heavily. "Somehow, I don't think you were lying. Maybe it's because I know myself. You said you didn't have the information that 'a resident's copying has a time limit' in your head. I believe you. But you overlooked something. Do you know what?"
Jin Xueli heard it, but it seemed to come through some hazy barrier, leaving her unable to understand.
With her eyes half-open, she watched the nearby candle slowly form a transparent lake over her body, as though the lake of blood beneath her were merely its reflection.
Perhaps this was a fitting way to die: watching herself in another time and place go about her life, oblivious, before slowly deciding when to close her eyes.
"When we got into the taxi, you surrendered a memory, just as I did. The memory you surrendered was probably that very piece of information: 'a resident's copying has a time limit.' That's why you think you don't know it. But that conveniently allowed you to seize on what I said, treating it as a loophole, as proof that you were the original..."
Even the dying Jin Xueli understood that last sentence.
"So you're the resident," her other self concluded.
If I'm the resident, then I won't die here.
Jin Xueli desperately wanted to say this aloud, but only a rattling sound came from her throat. Her injured left shoulder seemed to have become a black abyss, through which her mind and consciousness were rapidly draining away. So much so that when she struggled to turn her head slightly to the left, she did not even dare glance at her shoulder.
In her blood-tinged vision, the other "Jin Xueli" was bending to pick up the Fire Axe.
The axe, coated in her blood, flesh, and bone fragments, had bitten too deep earlier. The resident had lost its grip, and it had fallen out of her flesh and bone onto the floor.
Jin Xueli vaguely remembered that after taking the axe blow, she seemed to have staggered a few more steps forward-at that moment, the fact that her "shoulder had been severed" had still seemed remote, not yet accepted by her brain. All she could think about was still reaching the right section of the candle.
That was why, when she could no longer hold herself up and finally collapsed, most of her body had fallen beneath the candle.
"...Resident," she whispered, watching the profile bending to lift the axe. "I'm not."
"Ha."
The resident did not look up. It hefted the axe and uttered only that single syllable.
"Pants..." Each word she spoke was almost an insubstantial phantom, barely even a breath. "Car... took away."
It really was another "Jin Xueli," as though she were talking to herself. Those few words, incomprehensible to anyone else, made it pause before it quickly understood.
"You mean the memory taken from you in the car was actually the experience of buying your pants?"
It gave a very deliberate laugh to show how ridiculous that was. "Are you losing your mind because you're dying? This is the Nest. The hopscotch section was especially strange and dangerous. After you'd just fought me, when you got into the taxi and paid your fare, the first thing that sprang to mind was where you bought-"
It broke off before finishing.
If this resident had not copied Jin Xueli, it would not have wasted another half second on that absurd claim. It could have walked over and ended her life with a swing of its axe.
But precisely because it had become "Jin Xueli" so completely, it suddenly paused, standing in place with the axe in hand. Two seconds later, it lowered its head to look at its pants.
It made a little noise through its nose, as though an unpleasant phone call had woken it from an early-morning dream.
People said knowing yourself was the hardest thing in the world. But after twenty-eight years of life, anyone who was not muddleheaded, numb, and stupid would have acquired some degree of self-knowledge.
In one respect, Jin Xueli was very much like a puppy less than a year old-a pigeon flying past would make it turn its head, and a distant noise would make it prick up its ears. Jin Xueli was the same.
A neon sign with a stroke missing from one of its letters, or the white feathers revealed when a bird fluttered its wings, would intrude upon her attention and briefly draw her mind away.
One of the Passenger Instructions required her to lower her head, letting it hang between the driver's seat and the front passenger seat.
What would happen after she followed that rule?
Jin Xueli would discover that part of her field of vision consisted of her own thighs and pants.
"You mean... you lowered your head, saw your pants, and involuntarily remembered buying them, and the driver took that memory?" the resident murmured, standing where it was.
Jin Xueli answered with half a groan from her throat.
"Ridiculous," the resident said, remaining still for the moment. "Impossible."
Even though it had already decided to kill Jin Xueli regardless of which of them was real, it still could not help thinking it over. Perhaps this was some part of Jin Xueli's personality at work, or perhaps it was human nature, merely copied onto it.
While it was lost in thought, Jin Xueli had already made out the history within the nearby Candle Tears. A tiny version of herself was telling the security guard, "...If anyone suspicious comes by, don't let him ring my doorbell..."
She remembered now. That was the day before she received the funeral wreath.
The Candle Tears enclosing that day floated just above her lower abdomen... The following day, the day she had entered the Nest, should be right beside it, shouldn't it?
Jin Xueli closed her eyes and imagined her right hand was a burrowing rodent searching for its target, crawling along silently.
Only by pretending it was not part of this rapidly cooling body could she barely move it, feeling her way along to gently turn on the next switch on the fire trough.
Cold wind poured into the left half of her body, while the right half grew faintly warm, like a hallucination.
She could not let the resident discover what she was doing-otherwise, it would immediately know what she intended.
The flame had only just begun to dance, and the candle had not fully melted, but the resident had already emerged from its thoughts. It exhaled and spoke.
"Look at me. You really almost talked me into going in circles. All this tangled business about what's real and what isn't-I can't figure it out, and I don't need to. Like I said, once I kill you, there won't be any problems left."
Buying even a few seconds had been difficult enough, but it was still nowhere near enough. As Jin Xueli desperately fought her dizziness and gathered her scattering consciousness, she searched her fogbound mind for another excuse.
She had to say something to distract the resident-fortunately, she was not a difficult person to distract. That flaw had now become something that could save her life.
"Can't..." The word floated from her lips like dust disturbed by a breath.
The resident walked toward her step by step, carrying the still-dripping Fire Axe. "Can't what?"
Jin Xueli's mind was like a fire about to go out. On the verge of losing consciousness, she dazedly voiced what was in her heart. "...Can't kill me."
The resident laughed, crouched down, and reached beneath the candle to grab her ankles. "Why can't I kill you?"
Whether it was its hand or those words, something ignited a few more glowing red sparks in Jin Xueli's mind.
She watched a broad expanse of white wax above her soften and melt, sagging unsteadily, as though reaching down to close her eyes and end her suffering.
"If I die... proves you're..."
The hand gripping her ankles paused.
Outside the candle, the resident sneered. "You mean, because residents can't die, if you die, that proves I'm the resident?"
She had never imagined that the only kindred spirit in her life who could understand her without a lengthy explanation would be a Nest resident that had copied her.
Jin Xueli narrowed her eyes, her trembling gaze resting on the Candle Tears. Dark shapes were finally beginning to appear inside, but it was not enough. She wanted to see tonight's version of herself as soon as possible.
"I understood the last time I killed you. You're a resident, but you don't think you're a resident. You believe with all your heart that you're the real 'Jin Xueli.' Even your self-doubt becomes evidence that strengthens your belief in yourself.
"If we're talking about which of us is more convinced, it's actually you, all right?
"Given your absolute conviction that you're the real person, if I inflict a fatal wound on you, you'll die from it too. Haven't you heard of that experiment? They blindfolded someone and lied that they were about to burn him. After they artificially induced pain, actual burn marks appeared on his arm.
"That's the power of the mind. The reason I can kill you is exactly the same as in that experiment."
"Jin Xueli" dragged her as it spoke. But it could not move her with one hand, so it put down the Fire Axe and used both. Like a heavy lump of dead flesh, Jin Xueli slid across the floor.
Inside the Candle Tears, a tiny Jin Xueli had just come out through a doorway. She walked along Colorado Avenue, her steps still a little unsteady from the alcohol, unaware that a human-shaped shadow had quietly begun following her.
Just a little more. I'll see the hopscotch any moment.
That desperately struggling thought made bright red points flicker in the nearly extinguished fire in her mind. Jin Xueli did not know where the strength came from, but as she slid outward again, she raised her hand and nudged something inside the Candle Tears.
Having watched the resident manipulate the Candle Tears earlier, she already knew how to adjust the timeline. Perhaps heaven still could not bear to let her fall into a hopeless situation here. In her dying struggle, Jin Xueli actually adjusted the time to precisely the right moment. From inside the Candle Tears came the words she had snapped at the resident before getting into the taxi: "Get lost!"
As the voice rang out, the hands loosened, and her feet dropped to the floor with a thud.
"What did you do?" The resident reacted extremely quickly. "You want to stop the 'resident' from copying 'Jin Xueli'? You'll disappear! You're the resident!"
It seemed about to lunge at her.
Jin Xueli's right hand felt like an empty bag of skin, without muscle, blood, or strength. Yet she still gritted her teeth and pushed the tiny Jin Xueli into the car-her enormous fingers became a partition, separating the tiny Jin Xueli from the hopscotch.
Before Jin Xueli finally lost consciousness, she dimly saw that the tiny Jin Xueli inside the Candle Tears had not been copied.
The "Vulture" resident inside the Candle Tears had not turned into another version of her either.
In other words... the history of "being copied by the resident" had been changed, erased. It had never happened at all.
Soon, only one Jin Xueli would open her eyes in the underground exhibition hall of the Museum of Modern Art.
And only when she reviewed the strands of memory in her mind would she know which Jin Xueli was the resident and which Jin Xueli was herself.
My flight was delayed again today, wasting an entire day. It was almost nine at night by the time I got home, and I've only just finished writing this update... Sorry to keep everyone waiting.
Actually, I have lots to share, but it's too late today, and I'm dead tired. I'll tell you next time.
Because Jin Xueli changed history, the previous seven or eight chapters have all disappeared, as though they never happened. Really, go look if you don't believe me.
(End of chapter)
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