Illusion Report

The two streams of memory were like adjacent rivers, on the verge of merging now that the earth between them had crumbled away. Their surfaces reflected each other’s ripples, making it impossible to tell where memory ended and reality began.

Jin Xueli lay on the ground. Above her, her vision was filled by the midsection of a giant candle.

For a moment, she couldn’t remember what had brought her to the ground. Had her left shoulder been hacked off? Or was her throat torn open?

All she knew was that she seemed to be losing a great deal of blood.

Despite the grievous injury, her body had not yet gone into shock, but her consciousness was already on the verge of fading.

"I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided you’re the resident after all."

Her own voice, ragged and out of breath, spoke from a few feet away. "Somehow, I don’t think you were lying. Maybe it’s because I know myself. You said you didn’t know that resident copies have a time limit. I believe you. But you overlooked something, you know?"

Jin Xueli heard the words, but it was as if they were coming through a fog, hazy and incomprehensible.

Her eyes were half-open, watching the nearby candle. The wax slowly formed a transparent pool over her body, making the lake of blood beneath her seem like its mere reflection.

’Perhaps this was a fitting way to die. Watching a past version of myself from another time live on, oblivious, and then slowly deciding when to finally close my eyes.’

"When you got in the taxi, you gave up a memory, just like I did. I suspect the memory you surrendered was the very fact that ’resident copies have a time limit,’ which is why you think you don’t know it. That made it easy for you to latch onto what I said, using it as a loophole, as proof that you’re the original..."

Even on the brink of death, Jin Xueli understood that last sentence.

"So you’re the resident," her other self concluded.

’If I’m the resident, I won’t die here.’

Jin Xueli desperately wanted to say the words, but only a gurgle escaped her throat. Her wounded left shoulder felt like a Black Abyss, her mind and consciousness draining away through it. When she managed a pained, slight turn of her head to the left, she didn’t dare look at the injury.

In her blood-tinted field of view, the other "Jin Xueli" was bending over to pick up the fire axe.

The axe, covered in her flesh and bone fragments, had bitten so deep that the resident had lost her grip on it. It had slipped from the wound and clattered to the floor.

Jin Xueli vaguely remembered stumbling forward a few steps after the axe blow. In that moment, the reality of her "severed shoulder" was still distant, yet to be processed by her brain. Her only thought was still to get to the correct spot beside the candle.

That’s why, when she could no longer hold on and finally collapsed, the better part of her body landed beneath the candle.

"...Resident," she whispered, her eyes on the silhouette of the other woman bending to lift the axe. "I’m not."

"Ha."

The resident didn’t look up. She just hefted the axe, uttering a single syllable.

"Pants..." Each word was a faint specter, barely a breath. "Car... took..."

As expected of another "Jin Xueli." It was like talking to herself; those few words, which would have been incomprehensible to anyone else, made the resident freeze for a moment before she quickly understood.

"You’re trying to say the memory the taxi took was you buying your pants?"

She gave a deliberate, mocking laugh. "Are you delirious from blood loss? This is the Nest! The hopscotch part, especially, was bizarre and dangerous. And after fighting for your life with me, you get in a taxi to pay the fare, and the very first thing that pops into your head is where you bought your—"

She broke off mid-sentence.

If this resident hadn’t been a copy of Jin Xueli, she wouldn’t have wasted a single second on such an absurd claim. She would have simply walked over, swung the axe, and ended her life.

But precisely because she had so completely become "Jin Xueli," she froze. She stood there, axe in hand, and after a couple of seconds, she glanced down at her own pants.

She made a noise through her nose, like someone being roused from a pleasant dream by an irritating phone call.

They say knowing yourself is the hardest thing in the world. But after twenty-eight years of life, unless you’re a complete dullard, you’re bound to have some self-awareness.

There was one thing about Jin Xueli that was very much like a puppy less than a year old. A pigeon flying past would make it crane its neck; a faint noise in the distance would make its ears perk up. Jin Xueli was just like that.

A neon sign with a missing stroke, the flash of white feathers as a bird took flight—anything could barge into her awareness and momentarily steal her focus.

One of the taxi’s rules was to keep your head down, bowed between the driver’s and passenger’s seats.

So what would happen when she followed that rule?

Jin Xueli would find her vision filled with her own thighs and pants.

"You’re trying to say..." the resident murmured, standing rooted to the spot, "...that you lowered your head, saw your pants, and involuntarily remembered buying them, and *that’s* the memory the driver took?"

A half-groan from Jin Xueli’s throat served as her answer.

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

Even though she had resolved to kill Jin Xueli regardless of who was real, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking it over. Perhaps it was a part of Jin Xueli’s personality asserting itself, or perhaps it was just a facet of human nature she had copied.

While the resident was lost in thought, Jin Xueli focused on the history unfolding within the nearby Candle Tears. A tiny version of herself was instructing the doorman, "...if anyone suspicious shows up, don’t let them ring my bell..."

She remembered. That was the day before she received the funeral wreath.

’The Candle Tears containing that day was floating just above my stomach... The next day—today, the day I entered the Nest—should be right next to it, shouldn’t it?’

Jin Xueli closed her eyes, imagining her right hand was a gopher seeking its burrow, inching along stealthily.

Only by pretending it wasn’t a part of this rapidly cooling body could she manage to move it, to fumble for and gently flick the next switch on the fiery channel.

A frigid wind seemed to pour into the left side of her body. Her right side, however, began to feel faintly warm, like a phantom sensation.

’I can’t let the resident see what I’m doing—she’ll instantly know my plan.’

The new flame had only just leapt to life, the wax not yet fully melted, when the resident snapped out of her reverie. She let out a breath and spoke.

"Look at me, I almost fell for your little trick. All this talk of what’s real and what’s not, this confusing nonsense... I can’t figure it out, and I don’t need to. It’s like I said before: once I kill you, all my problems will be solved."

Delaying her for a few seconds had been a feat in itself, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Jin Xueli fought against the encroaching darkness, marshalling her fading consciousness as she searched her fog-filled mind for another excuse.

She had to say something to distract the resident. Luckily, Jin Xueli herself was easily distracted; a flaw that might now be the very thing to save her life.

"Don’t..." A single word floated from her lips like dust disturbed by a breath.

The resident stalked toward her, the still-dripping fire axe in hand. "Don’t what?" she asked.

Jin Xueli’s mind was like a dying fire. On the verge of unconsciousness, she drowsily spoke her true thoughts. "...Don’t kill me."

The resident laughed, squatting down and reaching a hand under the candle’s overhang to grab her ankle. "And why shouldn’t I kill you?"

Whether it was her hand or her words, something sparked a few bright red embers in Jin Xueli’s mind.

She watched the large sheet of white wax on her body soften and sway, drooping lower as if reaching down to close her eyes and end her suffering.

"If I die... it proves you’re..."

The hand clutching her ankle froze.

From outside the candle’s glow, the resident sneered. "Are you trying to say that since a resident can’t die, your death would prove that *I’m* the resident?"

’Who would’ve thought? The only person in my life I’ve ever connected with so deeply, who understands me without needing words, is a resident from the Nest that copied me.’

Jin Xueli narrowed her eyes, her trembling gaze fixed on the Candle Tears. A dark silhouette was finally taking shape within them, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to see tonight’s version of herself, and fast.

"I figured it out the last time I killed you. You’re the resident, but you don’t believe you are. You believe with all your heart that you’re the real ’Jin Xueli.’ Even your own self-doubt just becomes more proof to reinforce your conviction.

"If we’re talking about which one of us is more convinced, it’s you, isn’t it?

"Since you’re so thoroughly convinced you’re the real one, if I give you a fatal wound, you’ll die from it. Haven’t you heard of that experiment? They blindfold a person, tell them they’re about to be burned, and after inducing the sensation of pain, actual burn marks appear on their arm.

"That’s the power of the mind. The principle I’m using to kill you is exactly the same."

The other "Jin Xueli" started dragging her as she spoke. She couldn’t get any purchase with one hand, so she dropped the fire axe and used both. Jin Xueli slid across the floor like a heavy slab of meat.

Inside the Candle Tears, a tiny Jin Xueli had just walked out of a doorway. She was on Colorado Avenue, her steps still a bit unsteady from the alcohol, oblivious to the humanoid shadow tailing her.

’Just a little more... almost to the hopscotch part.’

This desperate thought caused the dying embers in her mind to flare. Jin Xueli didn’t know where she found the strength, but as she was dragged farther out, she raised her hand and swiped at the Candle Tears.

She had watched the resident manipulate the Candle Tears, so she already knew how to adjust the timeline. Perhaps fate couldn’t bear to see her perish in such a state. In her death throes, Jin Xueli managed to time it just right. A voice—her own—erupted from the Candle Tears, cursing the resident just before she got in the taxi: "Get lost!"

As the voice rang out, the hands holding her loosened their grip, and her feet dropped to the floor with a THUD.

"What did you do?!" The resident reacted in a flash. "Are you trying to stop ’Jin Xueli’ from being copied by the ’resident’? You’ll vanish! You’re the resident!"

She looked like she was about to pounce.

Jin Xueli’s right hand felt like an empty sack of skin, devoid of muscle, blood, or strength. Still, she gritted her teeth and shoved the tiny Jin Xueli into the taxi. Her massive finger became a wall, separating the miniature her from the hopscotch game.

Just before she finally lost consciousness, Jin Xueli vaguely saw the tiny Jin Xueli inside the Candle Tears avoid being copied.

The "Vulture" resident within the Candle Tears never transformed into another version of herself.

In other words... the moment in history where she was "copied by the resident" had been altered, erased. It had never happened.

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 timeline of memories in her mind would she know which Jin Xueli had been the resident, and which one had been her.