Chapter 28: Kim Seol-ri — The Content from So Many Previous Chapters Has Disappeared

The two threads of memory were like adjacent rivers; once the soil between them dissolved, they were on the verge of converging. The surface of the water reflected each other's ripples, making it impossible to distinguish where memory ended and reality began.

Jin Xueli collapsed to the ground. Above her field of vision loomed the belly of a massive candle.

For a moment, she could not recall why she had fallen: had her left shoulder been severed? Or was her throat torn open? She only knew that she seemed to be losing a massive amount of blood. Despite such grave wounds, while her bodily systems had not yet gone into shock, her consciousness was already on the brink of dissolution.

"I thought about it again, and I still feel that you are the Resident after all."

Her own voice rang out a few steps away, breathing heavily. "I don't know why, but I feel you aren't lying. Maybe it's because I understand myself. You said you didn't have the information that 'Resident replication has a time limit,' and I believe you. But you overlooked one thing, you know?"

Jin Xueli heard the words, but it was as if they were separated by a layer of something, muffled and incomprehensible. Half-opening her eyes, she watched the candle not far away slowly form a pool of transparent liquid on her body, as if the lake of blood beneath her were merely its reflection.

Perhaps this kind of death was fitting; watching another version of herself in a past space-time live and act unknowingly, then slowly deciding when to close her eyes.

"When you got into the taxi, just like me, you surrendered a piece of memory. The memory you surrendered was likely the very information about the 'time limit for Resident replication,' which is why you truly think you don't know it. In doing so, however, it becomes convenient for you to cling to my words, treating them as a loophole, as proof that you are the original..."

Even the dying Jin Xueli understood that final sentence.

"So, you are the Resident," the other version of herself concluded.

*If I am the Resident, then I won't die here.*

Jin Xueli desperately wanted to say those words, but only a rattling sound emerged from her throat. Her injured left shoulder seemed to have become a black abyss; her spirit and consciousness were rapidly draining away through it, to the point where, as she struggled to turn her head slightly to the left, she dared not even glance at her own shoulder.

In her blood-tinged field of vision, the other "Jin Xueli" was bending down to pick up a fire axe. The axe, stained with her flesh and bone fragments, had fallen to the ground because the Resident had failed to maintain its grip when it had buried itself too deeply into her.

Jin Xueli hazily remembered that after being struck by the axe, she had stumbled forward a few steps—at that time, the fact that her "shoulder had been severed" still felt distant, not yet accepted by her brain; her mind had been fixated on reaching the correct section of the candle. That was why, when she could no longer hold on and finally collapsed, the greater part of her body fell beneath the candle.

"...Resident," she whispered, watching the silhouette bending down to retrieve the axe. "I am not one."

"Ha."

The Resident did not look up. It weighed the axe in its hand and emitted only a single syllable.

"Pants..." Each of her words was like a floating phantom, barely even a breath. "The car... took them away."

True to being another "Jin Xueli," it was as if she were speaking to herself; the few words that would have been unintelligible to anyone else made the Resident pause, and it reacted quickly.

"Are you trying to say that the memory taken from you in the car was actually the experience of buying your pants?"

To signal how absurd it found this, it laughed deliberately and said, "Is your brain failing you as you die? This is the Nest, and that hopscotch part is both bizarre and dangerous. After just fighting me, when you got in the taxi to pay, the first thing that jumped into your mind was where you bought—"

It did not finish the sentence; it was interrupted.

Had this Resident not been fully replicated as Jin Xueli, it certainly would not have wasted half a second on this preposterous claim; it would have walked over, swung the axe, and ended her life.

Yet precisely because it had become "Jin Xueli" in every sense, it faltered, standing still with the axe in hand. After two seconds, it looked down at the pants it was wearing.

It made a sound through its nose, as if being woken from a morning dream by an unpleasant phone call.

They say that understanding oneself is the hardest thing in the world; but if a person has lived for twenty-eight years, as long as they are not living in a stupor or acting with dull-witted apathy, they will have some degree of self-awareness.

There was something about Jin Xueli that was much like a puppy under a year old—a pigeon flying by would make it turn its head, and the slightest distant noise would make it prick up its ears; Jin Xueli was the same. A neon sign with a missing stroke, the white feathers revealed when a bird flapped its wings—all these things would intrude upon her attention, briefly summoning her spirit away.

One of the taxi passenger rules was to lower one's head between the driver's seat and the passenger seat. After she followed that rule, what would have happened? Jin Xueli would have noticed that part of her field of vision was her own thighs and pants.

"You mean to say... you lowered your head, saw your pants, and couldn't help but recall the experience of buying them, and that memory was taken by the driver?" the Resident stood where it was, murmuring.

Jin Xueli groaned from her throat as an answer.

"Ridiculous," the Resident said, not moving. "Impossible."

Even though it had resolved to kill Jin Xueli regardless of who was real, it could not help but contemplate—perhaps this was a facet of Jin Xueli's personality at work, or perhaps it was human nature that it had inherited through replication.

Taking advantage of its lapse into thought, Jin Xueli had already caught sight of the history within the candle's tears nearby. A tiny version of herself was instructing the doorman: "...If there is a suspicious person, do not let him ring my bell..."

She remembered; that was the day before she received the funeral wreath. The candle tears enveloping that day were floating just above her lower abdomen... the next day, which was today, the day she entered the Nest, it must be right next to it, right?

Jin Xueli closed her eyes, imagining her right hand as a gopher searching for its target, crawling silently. Only by pretending it was not part of this rapidly cooling body could she barely move it, fumbling to gently open the next switch on the fire trough.

A cold wind blew into the left side of her body, but the right side began to warm slightly, like a hallucination. She could not let the Resident discover her actions—otherwise, it would immediately know what she was planning.

The fire had only just leaped up, and the candle had not yet fully melted, but the Resident had already snapped out of its thoughts, exhaled, and spoke.

"Look at me, I almost got tangled up in your words. These truths and lies, this circling around—I can't tell them apart, and I don't need to. Like I said, kill you, and all the problems disappear."

Delaying it for a few seconds was already an immense feat, but it was far from enough. While desperately resisting the dizziness and gathering her scattered consciousness, Jin Xueli searched her fog-filled brain for the next excuse. She had to say something to distract the Resident—fortunately, she was not a person who was hard to distract; this flaw had now become something that could save her life.

"Cannot..." Two words drifted from her lips, like dust disturbed by a breath.

The Resident, carrying the still-dripping fire axe, walked toward her step by step and asked, "Cannot what?"

Jin Xueli's mind was like a fire about to go out; on the edge of losing consciousness, she drowsily spoke her inner thoughts: "...Cannot kill me."

The Resident laughed, crouched down, and reached under the candle to grab her ankle. "Why can't I kill you?"

It was unclear whether it was its hand or that question that ignited a few more red sparks in Jin Xueli's mind. She watched the large patch of white wax on her body soften and melt, gradually drooping as if to reach down and close her eyes, sparing her from further suffering.

"My death... proves you are..."

The hand gripping her ankle paused.

The Resident sneered from outside the candle's glow and said, "You want to say that because a Resident cannot die, if you die, it proves that I am the Resident?"

*Never would I have guessed that the only confidant in my life with whom I could share a silent understanding would be a Resident of the Nest that replicated me.*

Jin Xueli squinted, her gaze trembling as it rested on the candle tears. Shadows were finally appearing faintly within them, but it wasn't enough; she wanted to see herself from tonight as soon as possible.

"I understood this the last time I killed you. You are a Resident, but you don't think you are a Resident. You believe with all your heart that you are the real 'Jin Xueli,' even your inner self-doubt has instead become evidence that you believe in yourself.

"If we're talking about who is more convinced, it's actually you, alright? On the premise that you firmly believe you are the real person, if I inflict a fatal wound on you, you will also die from such an injury. Haven't you heard of that experiment? Where someone is blindfolded and told they are about to be burned, and after a simulated pain is induced, real burn marks appear on their arm?

"That is the power of psychology at work. The principle by which I can kill you is exactly the same as that experiment."

"Jin Xueli" dragged her as it spoke, but unable to do it with one hand, it set down the fire axe and used both—Jin Xueli slid across the floor like a heavy, dead weight.

In the candle tears, a tiny Jin Xueli had just emerged from a door. She walked down Colorado Boulevard, her steps unsteady from the lingering effects of alcohol, unaware that a human-shaped shadow was silently following behind her.

Just a little bit more, she was about to see the hopscotch.

This desperate, struggling thought caused the dying fire in her mind to flicker with bright red sparks. Jin Xueli did not know where the strength came from; as she slid outward again, she raised her hand and nudged the candle tears.

Having watched the Resident manipulate the candle tears, she already knew how to adjust the timeline. Perhaps Heaven could not bear to see her trapped in this desperate situation; in her death throes, Jin Xueli managed to set the time perfectly—a voice echoed from the candle tears, her own voice cursing the Resident before she got into the taxi: "Get lost!"

As the sound rang out, the hands gripping her loosened, and her feet hit the floor with a thud.

"What did you do?" The Resident's reaction was lightning-fast. "You want to prevent 'Jin Xueli' from being replicated by the 'Resident'? You will disappear, you are the Resident!"

It seemed to be lunging forward.

Jin Xueli's right hand felt like an empty bag of skin, devoid of muscle, blood, or strength; yet, gritting her teeth, she pushed the tiny Jin Xueli into the car—her massive finger became a partition wall, separating the tiny Jin Xueli from the hopscotch.

Before Jin Xueli finally lost consciousness, she saw, through the haze, that the tiny Jin Xueli in the candle tears had not been replicated. The "Vulture" Resident in the candle tears had also not turned into another version of herself.

In other words... the history of "being replicated by a Resident" had been changed, erased; it had never happened at all.

Soon, there would be only one Jin Xueli opening her eyes in the basement exhibition hall of the Museum of Modern Art. And only when she looked back at the threads of memory in her mind would she know which Jin Xueli was the Resident, and which Jin Xueli was herself.