con·fla·tion

   (kənˈfleɪ ʃən)

noun

the process or result of fusing items into one entity; fusion; amalgamation.

This is it.

There is only one night left.

One night that will last longer than any insomnious episode you have every experienced. It will grab you by the throat and make you want to nervously skip to the end.

But guess what?

I’m as clueless as you are right now.

I’m oblivious of what is going through my brother’s mind right now.

The only thing I do know is that the race to the epilogue has started.

One night.

Hidden inside an empty room while holding my phone, I rested the back of my head against the cold wall behind me. My eyes started to twitch, nervously. Hyoyeon never stopped calling me, as if she knew that the journey to kill my killer would start tonight.

I tried not thinking about Tao and his unreliable truth, but somehow my mind got infested by the thought of him. I had spent months with him, my heart refused to believe that he had deceived me in the most despicable way I could ever imagine. My mind was another story. I sighed deeply and closed my eyes.

The sun was going down; a summer’s day evolving in a cold, dark night. The house was turning into a quiet wolf’s nest. I stood up and looked at the red bed. The entire room was covered in red. I assumed that this once belonged to a red doll. He or she wasn’t here at the moment. I didn’t even question it. In this house, nothing could be trusted.

It was strange, feeling hot tears streaming down my cheeks without being summoned by Yifan. The thought of joining him soon enough soothed me. I wouldn’t be alone anymore yet somehow, rage refused letting me die this easily and without contempt. I hated injustice and I hated people who destroyed lives like Yifan’s.

The only thing, the sole thing I wanted to do before I would die was bring this house down.

I grabbed my gun and checked the ammo. It was full, ready to be used. I couldn’t remember how many lives I had taken myself to bring justice to our country. I wanted to undo the gruesome acts of our dictator, by committing horrific deeds myself. Life was a sad and ironic paradox.

To think that I had been here sitting for the last two hours thinking everything I would do tonight through like a strategic war. A war I was going to win no matter what.

I solved every riddle except one.

1) I knew that ‘Two as a whole’ referred to Yifan and myself. The person who wrote this (could be anyone at this rate) was aware of my conjoined twin.

2) Chaerin told me that she was close to the house’ secret. She found it and now she was dead. I needed to check her room and search for anything she might’ve left me.

3) The orbitoclast belonged to a psychiatrist not a neurobiologist (Dr Lee).

4) According to the riddle, Tao was a liar. I couldn’t trust the Pink doll either. I needed to keep my eyes open for Hyosung, because she knew something.

5) The tarot card that was hidden inside Tao’s bookshelf said : Death. Funny. They warned and poisoned me afterwards.

6) Who was the gasmasked person?

7) Tao was right about the mouse becoming greater than the cat. Someone overpowered Zico and now he was hiding somewhere. The fact that Tao explained this without any hesitation made me wonder.

I inhaled deeply, trying to catch every single air molecule and make it my own. Eternal life was nothing to me anymore. This needed to be done. I was ready to end this.

The third floor was completely silent. A cold shiver trailed all the way down my back when I reached Chaerin’s room. The expectation of an utterly empty room didn’t get confirmed when I walked inside and closed the door behind me. Zico’s cat was present, looking at me with its ghostly eyes