The Opera Ghost Comes Home

"Who... am I?"

Rumble—

Pale lightning flashed across the ink-black clouds,

Rain poured down in torrents. Thunderstorms, furious as divine wrath, drenched the muddy earth. In the layered ripples of the puddles, a vermilion figure was reflected in broken fragments.

It was a young man wearing a bright red opera robe. He staggered drunkenly through the mud, his wide sleeves dancing in the gale. Rain washed the grit from his robe, and that bloodlike crimson was startling against the night.

"Stop it... stop it!"

"Shut up, all of you!"

"I'm about to remember... I'm about... to remember..."

"I have a name... a name that belongs to me!"

The young man's soaked black hair hung over his brows, and his unfocused eyes were filled with confusion. As he struggled forward, he clutched his head in both hands, as though desperately trying to recall something.

His roar echoed down the deserted street, but it did not travel far before the endless curtain of rain swallowed it.

Thud—

In the darkness, his body caught on a protruding stone, and he crashed heavily to the ground!

A streak of scarlet blood rolled from the young man's temple. He lay sprawled on the ground in a daze, then suddenly seemed to remember something. A faint glimmer lit up in his clouded eyes.

"Chen Ling..."

A name suddenly flashed through his mind.

The moment he spoke those two words, a fragment of memory drifted out from the endless whispers that had nearly burst his head apart and fused with this frail body.

"What is this... transmigration?"

Chen Ling furrowed his brows tightly as he continuously absorbed this body's memories. His brain hurt as though it were being torn apart.

His name was Chen Ling. He was twenty-eight years old, an intern director at a theater in the capital. After a performance one day, he had remained alone onstage, arranging the actors' movements. Then a violent earthquake struck. He only felt a sharp pain above his head before losing consciousness completely.

Now that he thought about it carefully, he had most likely been crushed to death by a falling spotlight...

At the same time, Chen Ling was gradually absorbing this body's memories. To his surprise, this body's original owner was also named Chen Ling. Yet their fundamental understanding of the world was entirely different. The fragmented memories tore at one another, and Chen Ling felt as if his head were about to explode.

He kept taking deep breaths and struggled to rise from the ground. His opera robe was blotched with black and red, leaving him in a miserable state.

For some reason, his body felt incomparably heavy, like the exhaustion of having stayed up four or five nights in a row writing a production, until every last bit of strength had been drained from him...

"I should go home first..."

His exhausted body and fractured thoughts left him almost unable to think. He could only rely on this body's instincts to walk toward "home."

Although he did not know how he had arrived here, the original owner of this body remembered this place. Every day, after returning from the clinic where he cared for his younger brother, he would take this road. Normally, it was only a two- or three-minute walk from here to home.

But to him at this moment, the journey had never felt so long.

Icy rain streamed over Chen Ling's body, making him shiver uncontrollably. After enduring the cold and exhaustion for ten minutes through the rain, he finally arrived before the door from his memories.

Chen Ling searched through his pockets for a while, only to discover that he had no key on him.

So, with practiced ease, he retrieved a spare key from beneath the newspaper box beside the door and opened the door.

Creak—

Warm light spilled from inside, illuminating one corner of the pitch-black rainy night—and Chen Ling's pale face.

The instant he saw that light, Chen Ling's taut nerves relaxed on their own. The cold and exhaustion in his body seemed to be driven away somewhat by that single lamp.

He stepped into the house and saw two figures seated on opposite sides of the dining table. Their eyes were red-rimmed, as though they had just finished crying.

Hearing the door open, the two froze for a moment before turning their heads at the same time.

"Dad... Mom... I'm back."

With his head swimming, Chen Ling instinctively prepared to change his shoes by the door, only to realize he had been barefoot from the start. The soles of his feet and the spaces between his toes were nearly packed with mud, and he had already left two huge black footprints on the floor.

The two figures sitting at the dining table saw the red-clad Chen Ling enter through the door, and their pupils contracted violently!

"Y-You... you..."

The man's Adam's apple bobbed. His mouth hung open, his face the picture of someone who had seen a ghost.

"Mom... is there any water at home? I'm so thirsty." Once he returned home, Chen Ling's mind relaxed completely, and his consciousness was already on the brink of collapse. Muttering to himself, he stumbled into the kitchen, picked up the water jug from the dispenser, and began gulping it down.

Gulp, gulp, gulp...

In the kitchen, the red-clad figure drank greedily like a wild beast.

Water seeped from the corners of his mouth and dripped onto the floor, forming a puddle that reflected the two terrified, pale faces in the living room.

"A... A-Ling?" The woman forced herself to gather her courage and asked in a trembling voice, "H-How did you get back?"

Chen Ling hugged the water jug and drank wildly, utterly unable to hear the woman's words. Then, perhaps feeling that drinking this way was too slow, he stuffed the jug's fist-thick spout into his mouth and bit it apart in a single bite!

The synthetic plastic was chewed apart with force as surging water flooded into his mouth, utterly satisfying!

"I walked back."

A voice came from behind Chen Ling.

Yes... behind him.

At that moment, Chen Ling was still immersed in drinking water, yet his voice rang clearly in the other two's ears,

As if another red-clad Chen Ling stood in the invisible void behind him, spreading his hands as he answered matter-of-factly.

"The rain was a little heavy, and I think I got lost."

"I think I fell a few times on the road, and my shoes disappeared too..."

"Mom, I got the floor dirty. If it's not urgent, I'll clean it up after I wake up tomorrow... I'm too sleepy right now."

Watching the horrifying scene before them, the man and woman in the living room felt a chill creep down the backs of their necks. The kerosene flame in the glass lamp flickered constantly, as though an invisible hand were teasingly toying with the wick.

Their faces were deathly pale, yet they could only stand rigidly in place, not daring to move.

At last, the water jug was empty.

Chen Ling wiped his mouth as he set down the jug. Then he turned around, leaving one black footprint after another across the floor as he staggered toward his bedroom...

"Dad, Mom... you should go to bed early too. Good night."

He mumbled the words indistinctly, shut the bedroom door behind him, and was followed by a dull thump as something heavy fell onto the bed.

The living room fell into dead silence.

No one knew how long passed before those two figures, like statues, stiffly turned their heads... and looked at each other.

The wavering wick steadied once more. The eerie kerosene flame barely illuminated the dim living room as they sat trembling in their chairs, utterly drained of color.

"He... came back," the man said hoarsely. "How is that possible...?"

"If he really is A-Ling..."

"Then who... did we kill last night?"