Rain

For the first twenty-odd years of his life, Yu Sheng had always believed himself to be an ordinary person, living an ordinary life, doing ordinary things. And for the foreseeable future, this ordinariness was destined to continue—until the day his ordinary life would ordinary end.

Yes, that's what he had always thought—but those days seemed like a distant memory now.

The sky turned grim, heavy clouds like thick cotton wool gradually spread from the northeast, blanketing the entire city. The air was saturated with moisture, and a rainstorm was brewing within this humidity, perhaps starting in ten minutes.

Carrying vegetables and seasonings he'd just bought from the supermarket, Yu Sheng, blending in with the pedestrians, hurried through the streets, heading towards his residence under the increasingly dim daylight.

As he passed a shop, he unconsciously stopped, looking at the sign at the entrance. He stared for several seconds before withdrawing his gaze and continuing his hurried walk.

The pedestrians on the road grew fewer, and the vast city seemed to quiet down in the atmosphere of impending rain. Yu Sheng raised his eyes to look at the commercial street ahead, illuminated by the lights of the ground-floor shops. Although the scenery was familiar, an indescribable sense of strangeness welled up from the bottom of his heart.

Yes, strangeness—he had lived in this city for over twenty years, but now, this ridiculously vast, seemingly boundless "Boundary City" was a very unfamiliar place to him.

Because this city wasn't "truly" as he remembered it. Although some places were very similar, many more were subtly different—the Boundary City he grew up in wasn't this huge. He remembered the building in the city center should have been called Boyuan Building, not this "Council Tower." He remembered the shop at the Siyuan Street intersection used to be a wall, and his original home wasn't the enormous, dilapidated, and crumbling old house deep in the old town.

And more importantly, his remembered city didn't have so many... "things that weren't quite right," including, but not limited to, old-fashioned phone booths that appeared randomly at certain intersections, looking like they belonged to the last century; steam cars that drove over rooftops late at night; empty classrooms that constantly echoed with the sound of reading; and...

A tall, thin, pitch-black shadow standing by a lamppost on a pre-rain evening, as gaunt as a telephone pole.

Yu Sheng looked up, staring intently at the lamppost not far away. A stick-like humanoid silhouette stood there rigidly. The body, three to four meters tall, had a pitch-black face where no features could be discerned. The shadow seemed to have noticed him too, but it just stood there stiffly, locked in a distant standoff with Yu Sheng's gaze.

Hurrying pedestrians passed beneath the tall, thin shadow as if no one noticed this bizarre entity standing by the lamppost. Some even walked right through the shadow without being affected at all.

Only Yu Sheng could see that thing.

So, after a few seconds of meaningless eye contact, he withdrew his gaze, suppressed his pounding heart, and took a different route, walking away quickly.

Yu Sheng had never been quite sure whether the city had suddenly changed, or if he himself had changed. But he clearly remembered that the ordinary, normal life of his memory had left him two months ago on a certain morning—

He remembered that on that bright, sunny morning, he had opened the door of his home to go to the small supermarket at the intersection to buy some oranges.

That was the last time he had opened the door of "his own home." After that, he had never seen the home of his memory again.

He had also analyzed it, perhaps it was some kind of "transmigration." When he opened his door, he had stepped into another parallel world that was similar yet different from his homeland. He could no longer find the door that led back to his original world because the channel of time and space had collapsed the moment he crossed the threshold.

Another possibility was that he himself had undergone a "mutation." When he stepped out, or perhaps at some point afterward, due to some unknown influence, he had become "unusual." Thus, his eyes began to see certain "things" hidden beneath the surface. He was still living in the place he was familiar with, but he could no longer see those familiar things...

But these analyses were meaningless.

Regardless, he could no longer return to the "ordinary and normal world" of his memory. This strange and vast city was like a boundless forest, confining a bewildered castaway layer by layer within its eerie, intertwined branches and vines. And the short span of two months was not enough for Yu Sheng to uncover the secrets of this "forest."

In fact, he had only just roughly adapted to the familiar yet strange "new home" and managed to resume a "daily life" here.

Fortunately, in this Boundary City that clashed with his memories, he was still "Yu Sheng," with normal identification, a legal and valid address, a modest amount of savings, and a seemingly unreliable livelihood. If this was truly some kind of "transmigration," then at least he didn't have to face the three major challenges of "Who am I, where am I, and where do I get an ID card?" like most transmigrators.

Considering this is a well-ordered modern metropolis, the aforementioned challenges were particularly important. After all, modern society has a perfect population management system, and it's not easy for a transmigrator to escape the status of an undocumented person in such a city.

Of course, from another perspective, transmigrating to a chaotic old society or a barbaric world of magic might also have its own minor troubles—like being sliced up as a spy for an enemy country, sliced up as an alien invader, sliced up as an evil creature emerging from underground, or being stewed and eaten as temporary rations by goblins from a cave...

Yu Sheng's mind raced with these random thoughts that suddenly popped up from nowhere. He walked through the old alley next to the commercial street, taking another path towards "home."

The sky grew even more overcast, and it seemed that because of this increasingly gloomy sky, those "things that weren't quite right" began to slowly increase.

At the edge of Yu Sheng's vision, some swaying shadows were cast on the mottled and old outer walls of the buildings by the roadside. An agile cat leaped out from a shadow on the wall, gracefully climbed onto a beam of light shining from an unknown source, and meowed twice in Yu Sheng's direction before melting away with the raindrops, splashing into puddles on the ground.

The rain had started, earlier than expected.

The wind turned a bit cold, and the chill seemed to swirl with substance, drilling into the gaps of his clothes.

Yu Sheng clicked his tongue, having no choice but to hold the shopping bag over his head and quicken his pace.

If he hadn't been trying to avoid the dark shadow under the lamppost, he could have taken the main road and gotten home faster—although that house was also somewhat unfamiliar and strange, it was at least a place to shelter from the wind and rain.

Thinking of the shadow under the lamppost, Yu Sheng felt a bit annoyed.

Based on his experience, he knew that the strange things he saw were generally harmless. At least, as long as he didn't provoke them, those things would ignore him just as ordinary people ignored them. But even knowing this, he would still instinctively avoid things that looked too sinister—but now, it seemed that taking a detour today was not a good idea.

It was getting colder.

For a rain, this cold was a bit outrageous.

Yu Sheng found that the breath he exhaled was slowly turning into condensed ice mist. The raindrops falling from the sky were like sharp nails, hitting him, hard and cold, stinging painfully.

And the ground was gradually turning into a smooth mirror in this freezing rain.

A great sense of unease instantly alerted Yu Sheng. He realized the situation was wrong, very wrong. Even in this strange city, this was the first time he had encountered such a situation.

Unlike the "shadows" he usually saw, which were at most unsightly, this time he felt... malice.

This rain had malice.

He suddenly looked up, only to see that the small road, which had a few pedestrians earlier, was now deserted. The not-so-wide alleyway was empty except for him.

Not a single person could be seen. The distant lights became hazy and illusory. The intersection at the end of his vision seemed to recede and approach as if blocked by something. Around him, besides the cold and enclosed buildings, there was only the rain, the cold rain.

He felt as if the entire world was raining just for him.

Yu Sheng took a sharp breath and ran quickly towards the nearest building. An old iron gate stood there, seemingly the back door of some ground-floor shop—whatever it was, he needed to find someone to help him as soon as possible.

Because the raindrops in the rain were starting to have the sharpness of blades, and the surrounding temperature had dropped to the point where every breath brought a needle-like pain to his lungs.

After just a few steps, Yu Sheng reached the gate and slammed his hand on it forcefully: "Anyone..."

His eyes widened, and his voice cut off abruptly.

His hand hit the wall. The gate was painted on the wall.

The nearby windows were also painted on the wall.

A rustling sound came from nearby.

Yu Sheng slowly turned his head, looking in the direction of the sound.

In the knife-sharp falling freezing rain, a bizarre creature was slowly rising from the mirror-like water surface. It solidified from the pitch-black shadow and indifferently watched Yu Sheng.

It was a frog, a frog nearly a meter tall, its head densely covered with eyes, reflecting the freezing rain all around.

The frog opened its mouth, and a sharp tongue shot straight towards the prey's heart.

"What the hell..."

Yu Sheng's words were elegant, his reaction swift. Before the expletive even left his mouth, his body had already reacted—he dodged sharply to the side, his hand already pulling out his usual defensive extendable baton from his pocket, stepping, twisting his waist, and lunging forward...

The frog's tongue made a sharp turn in mid-air, piercing through Yu Sheng's heart area from behind.

Yu Sheng: "…?"

He blinked, watching the frog's tongue emerge from his chest, a heart beating rapidly at its tip.

"...Damn bastard, that thing is mine..."

He thought for a moment and cursed inwardly.

Then he died.

I'm back~~

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