They say that when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. Jin Xueli now knew that saying wasn't entirely wrong, but it wasn't entirely right, either.
She lay on the cold floor of the exhibition hall, but in her daze, she felt like a small boat. The ropes tethering her to the mortal world had come loose, and she was slowly drifting down a great, mist-shrouded river.
Sometimes the mist would part, revealing glimpses of her first days in Blackmoor City. Back then, she shared a semi-basement apartment. Looking out the living room window, all she could see of the street were passing shoes and pant cuffs.
Sometimes she saw her first client, examining an Illusion again and again under a desk lamp. The light shone into his eyes, illuminating his pupils—and his suspicion—until they were translucent.
The more recent events—like opening the Path, attracting a stalker, being killed—felt more like things that had happened to someone else. They were just flat, faded narratives, invisible in the mist. It was the older, more distant moments that felt more vivid: serving her mom's scallion and meat pie, always going to a friend's house to play in the seventh grade... Open the door, walk inside, and she could be home.
Tugged along by these distant memories, Jin Xueli drifted further away. The desperate, gurgling sound from her own wounded throat was starting to fade.
Her head was submerged in a pool of her own blood, which flowed out to form her personal River Styx.
"Die, then," a voice floated above her, speaking in a hissing, deflating whisper.
But that farewell call pulled Jin Xueli back a little.
'…How could this have happened?'
She had hailed a taxi, paid the fare, and followed the instructions to the letter the entire way, not daring to step out of line. Her neck was aching by the time she got out.
She had pretended not to see the female resident crawling out of the elevator to her right. She'd struggled to get into the basement exhibition hall, holding her breath, poised to strike…
She had done everything right, done everything she could, only to end up like this. It was so infuriating.
A dark figure stooped down, seeming to kneel on the floor to get a better look at her.
Jin Xueli couldn't make out the details anymore. All she saw was a dim silhouette: a roundish shape that was a head, the section connecting it was the neck. And jutting out from that neck was another dark shape—the Hunting Knife she had plunged into her attacker's throat.
As the silhouette spoke, the Hunting Knife buried deep in its neck bobbed up and down, vibrating slightly. The blade had slit its windpipe, and air hissed out between its words. "...I really should thank you. I just remembered. What I forgot was the hiking backpack."
Even if Jin Xueli still had any thoughts, there was no way to tell from the outside. Blood stained her neck a dark red, as if her throat had been erased. Her body was silent and still.
When she'd jumped into the first taxi, she must have accidentally stepped on a "Be Copied" square.
She remembered lifting her foot when her hiking backpack was suddenly yanked, nearly making her fall backward. Jin Xueli steadied herself and turned around, only to see her own face—no strange distortions, just the same smooth, radiant features, like looking in a mirror.
She froze.
"When did you copy me?" that other "Jin Xueli" had demanded, glaring at her. It looked like it wanted to shove her but was somehow afraid to touch her. "Get away from me!" it snapped.
'So the square that said 'Be Copied' really just... copied me?'
'That made sense, I guess. Copying something doesn't necessarily mean the original is damaged…'
Besides the extra copy, Jin Xueli felt that there was nothing wrong with her. The only thing that truly bothered her was that the other "Jin Xueli" seemed to have inherited her body and her will, and it now believed with all its heart that *it* was the original.
'...Then how could she be one hundred percent sure that she wasn't the resident? She was just as convinced that she was the real Jin Xueli.'
'No, that's not right. Impossible. This one in front of me is the resident, and it's trying to take my place at the Museum of Modern Art.'
There was one key piece of evidence that proved she was the real Jin Xueli: the backpack, the Hunting Knife, and her phone were still with her. They hadn't been duplicated. The other her was empty-handed.
"Back then, I was just thinking about how to jump into the car, and I ended up forgetting the hiking backpack. I was standing in the square for so long, and it was so heavy on my back, so I put it down on my feet…"
The dark, human-faced silhouette floating before her continued, its voice hissing with leaking air, "I forgot what happened after that to make me leave the backpack behind. I must have given that memory to the driver."
Even now, it seemed this "Jin Xueli" didn't consider itself a resident.
It paused, as if remembering something. "I was going to ask you, for rule four of the taxi notice, can you lift your head as soon as you've paid the fare? But you're a resident. What consequences would there be for you if you didn't follow the rules… Never mind. It doesn't matter. I got out of the car just fine anyway. And I never expected you to deliver my things to me."
'…So infuriating.'
At the time, she hadn't dared to keep fighting with "Jin Xueli," afraid she'd step onto some punishment square. So she had hailed another taxi, paid the fare with a memory, and followed the other "Jin Xueli" with her head bowed, getting out at the Museum of Modern Art.
She mimicked its every move, finally following it into the basement exhibition hall where she seized her chance and plunged the Hunting Knife deep into its throat.
Jin Xueli had heard that residents couldn't be killed. Even if they died, they would just regenerate somewhere else.
But residents were affected by rules other than life and death, so an attack could still have *some* effect. She just hadn't expected that the effect of a knife in the neck would be nothing more than a leaky windpipe.
She had stared blankly then, letting go of the knife, and looked at "Jin Xueli."
When it had tried to spit, nothing came out of its dry, black-hole of a mouth. Now, with a knife in its neck, it only hissed, leaking air instead of blood.
Her opponent had also stood frozen, its eyes rolling down to look at the Hunting Knife, then back up to look at her.
For a second or two, neither of them moved.
"Jin Xueli" slowly bared a familiar set of teeth at her. She had brushed every single one of them countless times, studied their color and shape in the mirror. She recognized them at a glance—but now they were in someone else's mouth.
'…How repulsive.'
"My neck has been stabbed," the resident stated matter-of-factly after those couple of seconds. "Since you copied my appearance, your neck should be pierced, too."
The moment the words left its mouth, Jin Xueli's neck split open.
'…Why? How could this happen?'
The air outside the body was so cold. Once her blood vessels and muscles were torn open, it was as if a splash of ice water had been poured into the gash. The pain was an afterthought.
The sudden chill on her neck was immediately washed away by a spray of hot blood, splattering across the face of the "her" standing opposite. Jin Xueli desperately clamped a hand to her ruptured neck, instinctively trying to press the wound shut, but blood still gurgled out between her fingers.
In her fragmented, dying consciousness, she collapsed to the ground.
Her eyelids froze half-open, and her soul drifted into a deep, thick fog.
****
Jin Xueli fought back the hair-raising discomfort and fear, pressing one hand tightly against her neck while the other gripped the handle of the Hunting Knife.
Her palms were slick with cold sweat, and her legs were too weak to stand, so she slowly slid to the floor. A few steps away, a corpse that looked exactly like her lay on the ground. Beneath its half-open eyelids, its pupils had the glazed look of a dead fish's belly.
The stab from "Jin Xueli" hadn't been too deep and had missed the critical areas, which was perhaps a blessing in disguise.
She knew full well that when a blade is embedded in the body, pulling it out will only cause a deeper wound and massive bleeding. The first rule of first aid was "don't pull anything out of a wound." Sometimes, the embedded object can even act as a temporary plug, reducing blood loss.
The reason "Jin Xueli" had died from the very same injury while she herself was still alive was likely due to that one key difference: the Hunting Knife plugging the wound. So it turned out residents weren't unkillable—at least this "Vulture" type could be killed.
The logic for killing it was just a bit convoluted: you had to let it copy you. After it copies your fatal wound, it dies.
Even a wound that just *looked* fatal would work.
Although she knew she wouldn't die, having a knife sticking out of her throat was a special kind of torture for the nerves. Besides, she couldn't call an ambulance in the Nest, couldn't go to the emergency room, and certainly couldn't climb a skyscraper with a knife in her neck, jump off, and return to Blackmoor City for medical care…
She had to do it herself.
She found a spare T-shirt in her backpack and wrapped it tightly around her neck, circling the knife. It was so tight that she gasped, spots of light dancing in her vision. She gently felt for the tip of the blade under her skin, found its position, and readied her fingertips. The moment the knife was out, she would have to apply immediate pressure to the wound. She couldn't risk hemorrhaging.
Jin Xueli knew the Nest was unsafe and that she'd likely have to perform first aid on herself more than a few times. But even though she had taught herself basic first aid and her bag was well-stocked, an injury like this was far beyond her imagination.
She herself didn't know how she managed to stop the bleeding and clumsily stitch up the knife wound—it was nothing short of a miracle.
Despite the successful "surgery," Jin Xueli still couldn't hold on and passed out for a while.
When she awoke, the basement exhibition hall was still silent. She and the stiffening corpse of herself were sprawled next to the giant candle. If you listened closely, it was as quiet as a tomb.
Jin Xueli rested for a long time before slowly pushing herself up.
The severe injury, the lingering fear, and the exhaustion made her want nothing more than to go home, curl up between her sheets, and sink into a long, sweet slumber, sniffing the familiar scent of Jasmine laundry detergent.
But it wasn't time for that yet.
Jin Xueli was a little surprised at herself. She never thought she could summon such inhuman resilience in the face of an Illusion. Who could survive a knife wound to the throat?
She walked step by step to the candle and, after a moment's hesitation, placed her hand on its body.
A line of small text immediately appeared next to her palm: April 22, 2009.
'...So, the history at this spot is what happened on April 22, 2009?'
She was currently standing several meters from the "head" of the candle. Why did this particular point represent April 22, 2009?
Jin Xueli thought for a moment, then walked to the very top of the candle. She reached out and touched it, and sure enough, she saw her own birthday: September 29, 1998.
'I see...' Her gaze followed the length of the candle.
So, the stream of time encased in the candle began at her birth and ran all the way to her present. The candle held no future.
'Is it because the future is chaotic and uncertain, so it can't be foreseen?'
Although her greedy wish to see the future had come to nothing, leaving her a bit disappointed, thinking about it from another angle was a strange comfort: since fate wasn't set in stone, she could still choose what to do and where to go. A person wasn't a little bug in a transparent cage, all paths already laid out.
In this shocking and bewildering world, a person still had this tiny bit of control over themselves.
Of course, Jin Xueli wasn't arrogant enough to think the Nest would create a custom-made Illusion just for her. No matter who touched the candle, it would probably display history starting from that person's date of birth.
She walked a little further down, estimating the distance, and placed her hand on the candle again, searching.
May 2, 2026. She had successfully found the moment she first met her stalker, Anthony.
Jin Xueli had an idea.
She crouched down, found an ignition switch under the metal channel, and with a CLICK, a flame ignited at the base of the candle.
She wanted to see if she could snuff out that event from the very beginning.