"Who... am I?"
Rumble-
Pale lightning flashed through ink-black clouds,
Rain came crashing down. The thunderstorm lashed the muddy earth like divine wrath, and in the reflections of puddles rippling over one another, a vermilion figure lay fragmented.
It was a teenage boy draped in a bright red opera robe. He staggered through the mud as though drunk, his broad sleeves billowing in the gale. Rain washed the dirt from his robe, leaving its blood-red color shockingly vivid against the night.
"Stop making noise... stop!"
"All of you, shut up!"
"I'm about to remember... any moment... I'm about to remember..."
"I have a name... a name of my own!"
The boy's wet black hair hung down to his eyebrows, and his unfocused eyes were filled with bewilderment. As he struggled forward, he clutched his head with both hands, as though desperately trying to remember something.
His furious cries echoed along the deserted street, only to vanish into the endless curtain of rain before they could travel far.
Thud-
In the darkness, he tripped over a protruding stone and crashed heavily to the ground!
A trickle of scarlet blood rolled down from the boy's temple. He lay there in a daze, then suddenly seemed to recall something. A faint light kindled in his clouded eyes.
"Chen Ling..."
A name suddenly flashed through his mind.
The instant he uttered that name, a fragment of memory drifted out of the endless murmuring that threatened to burst his skull and merged with this frail body.
"What is this... transmigration?"
Chen Ling's brow furrowed tightly. As he kept absorbing this body's memories, his brain hurt as though it were being torn apart.
His name was Chen Ling. He was twenty-eight, a trainee writer-director at a theater in the capital. After the performance that day, he had stayed alone onstage to plan the actors' blocking. Then a violent earthquake struck. He felt a sudden pain above his head before losing consciousness completely.
Thinking it over now, he had most likely been killed by a falling spotlight...
Meanwhile, Chen Ling continued piecing together this body's memories. To his surprise, its original owner was also named Chen Ling, but their basic understanding of the world was completely different. The fragmented memories fought one another, and Chen Ling felt as though his mind were about to explode.
He took deep breath after deep breath and struggled to his feet, his opera robe a miserable patchwork of black mud and red fabric.
For some reason, his body felt unbearably heavy, with the same hollowed-out exhaustion he felt after staying up four or five nights in a row writing a production...
"I should go home first..."
His exhausted body and fractured thoughts left him barely able to think. He could only follow this body's instincts and walk toward "home."
Although he had no idea how he had ended up here, this body's original owner remembered the place. He took this road home every day after caring for his younger brother at the clinic. Normally, home was only a two- or three-minute walk from here.
But to him now, the journey felt longer than ever.
Rain washed over Chen Ling's body with a bone-piercing chill, leaving him trembling uncontrollably. After enduring the cold and exhaustion for ten minutes as he trudged through the rain, he finally reached the front door from his memories.
Chen Ling felt around in his pockets for a while and realized he had no key,
So he deftly retrieved a spare key from beneath the newspaper box beside the door and let himself in.
Creak-
Warm light spilled from inside, illuminating a corner of the pitch-black rainy night-and Chen Ling's pale face.
The moment he saw that light, his taut nerves naturally relaxed. Even his cold and exhaustion seemed to ease a little in its glow.
He stepped inside and saw two figures sitting on opposite sides of the dining table, their eyes red, as though they had just been crying.
At the sound of the door opening, both froze, then turned their heads at the same time.
"Dad... Mom... I'm home."
His head swimming, Chen Ling instinctively moved to change his shoes at the door, only to discover that he had been barefoot all along. Mud packed his soles and the gaps between his toes, and he had already left two large black footprints on the floor.
The pupils of the two figures at the dining table contracted sharply when they saw the red-robed Chen Ling coming through the door!
"You... you..."
The man's Adam's apple bobbed. His mouth hung open, his expression that of someone who had seen a ghost.
"Mom... do we have any water? I'm so thirsty." Now that he was home, Chen Ling relaxed completely, his consciousness already teetering on the edge of oblivion. As he muttered, he stumbled into the kitchen, picked up the jug from the water dispenser, and began gulping it down.
Gulp, gulp, gulp...
In the kitchen, the red-robed figure swallowed the water greedily, like a beast.
Water dribbled from the corners of his mouth, pattering onto the floor and gathering into a puddle that reflected the two pale, terrified faces in the living room.
"A... A-Ling?" The woman forced herself to summon her courage and spoke in a trembling voice. "How... how did you get back?"
Chen Ling clutched the jug and gulped frantically, completely oblivious to her words. Then, apparently finding this too slow, he shoved its fist-wide neck straight into his mouth and bit it apart!
He chewed hard on the synthetic plastic as water surged into his mouth in a gloriously satisfying torrent!
"I walked."
A voice came from behind Chen Ling.
Yes... behind him.
Chen Ling was still wholly absorbed in swallowing the water, yet his voice reached the two of them clearly,
As though another red-robed Chen Ling stood in the invisible emptiness behind him, spreading his hands and answering as if it were perfectly natural.
"The rain was pretty heavy. I think I got lost."
"I think I fell a few times on the way, and my shoes disappeared too..."
"Mom, I got the floor dirty. If it can wait, I'll clean it up when I get up tomorrow... I'm too sleepy now."
Watching the spine-chilling scene before them, the man and woman in the living room felt a cold creeping up the backs of their necks. The kerosene flame flickered incessantly inside its glass shade, as though an invisible hand were toying mockingly with the wick.
Their faces were deathly pale, but they only stood rigidly in place, not daring to move.
At last, the jug was empty.
Chen Ling wiped his mouth and set the jug down. Then he turned, leaving a black footprint with every step as he shuffled across the floor and stumbled toward his bedroom...
"Dad, Mom... you should get to bed early too. Good night."
He mumbled the words and pulled the door shut behind him. Then came the muffled thud of something heavy landing on the bed.
The living room fell deathly silent.
Only after an unknown stretch of time did the two statue-like figures stiffly turn their heads... and look at each other.
The wavering wick steadied. The eerie kerosene flame barely lit the dim living room as they sat trembling in their chairs, not a trace of color left in their faces.
"He... came back," the man said hoarsely. "How is that possible..."
"If he really is A-Ling..."
"Then who... did we kill last night?"
Before you continue