"Who... am I?"
Rumble...
Pale lightning flashes across ink-black clouds.
Rain cascades down, and a thunderous deluge of apocalyptic wrath drenches the muddy earth. In the rippling reflection of a puddle, a figure in crimson staggers, falling apart.
It is a youth in a crimson opera robe. He stumbles through the mud as if drunk, his wide sleeves fluttering wildly in the gale. Mud and sand on the robe are washed away by the rain, leaving a shocking crimson that sears the eye in the dark night.
"Stop making noise... stop arguing!"
"Shut up, all of you!"
"I'm about to remember... soon... I'm about to remember..."
"I have a name... a name of my own!"
The youth's damp black hair hangs to his eyebrows, and his dazed eyes are full of confusion. He trudges forward with difficulty, holding his head with both hands, as if struggling to recall something.
His roar echoes in the deserted street, but it doesn't travel far before being drowned in the endless curtain of rain.
Plop——
In the darkness, his body is tripped by a protruding stone and falls heavily to the ground!
A streak of crimson blood trickles from the corner of the youth's forehead. He lies there blankly, and suddenly, as if remembering something, a faint light flashes in his murky eyes.
"Chen Ling..."
A name suddenly flashes through his mind.
The moment he utters these two words, a fragment of memory drifts out from the endless murmur that almost bursts his head, merging with this frail body.
"What is this... time travel?"
Chen Ling frowns tightly. As he digests the memories of this body, his brain feels like it was being split apart by a splitting pain.
His name is Chen Ling, 28 years old, an intern director at a theater in the capital. After a performance ended, he was alone on the stage designing the actors' movements when a violent earthquake struck. He only felt a blow to his head and then lost consciousness completely.
Now, thinking back carefully, he was probably killed by a falling spotlight...
At this moment, Chen Ling is also digesting the memories of this body. To his astonishment, the original owner of this body is also named Chen Ling, but their basic perceptions of the world are completely different. Fragmented memories clash with each other, making Chen Ling feel like his brain is on the verge of explosion.
He takes deep breaths repeatedly and struggles to get up from the ground. His crimson robe is black and red in patches, making him look extremely disheveled.
For some reason, his body feels unbearably heavy, as if he had stayed up all night writing a script for four or five days in a row, and his whole body is hollowed out with exhaustion...
"Let's go home first..."
His exhausted body and fragmented thoughts leave him barely able to think. He can only rely on the instincts of this body to walk in the direction of "home".
Although he doesn't know how he got here, the original owner of this body has memories of this place. Every day after taking care of his younger brother at the clinic, he would take this route home. It usually only takes two or three minutes to walk from here to home.
But for him at this moment, this journey is longer than ever before.
The rain, carrying bone-chilling cold, soaks Chen Ling's body. He can't stop trembling. After enduring the cold and exhaustion for ten minutes in the rain, he finally arrives at the door of the house in his memory.
Chen Ling fumbles in his pocket for a while and finds that he has no key on him.
So, he skillfully reaches into the bottom of the newspaper box by the door and takes out a spare key to open the door.
Squeak——
Warm light spills out from the house, illuminating a corner of the pitch-black rainy night and Chen Ling's pale face.
The moment he sees this light, Chen Ling's tense nerves relax naturally, and the cold and exhaustion on his body seem to be dispelled a little by this lamp.
He steps into the house and sees two figures sitting on either side of the dining table, their eyes red and swollen as if they had just cried.
Hearing the sound of the door opening, the two are stunned for a moment and then turn their heads at the same time.
"Dad... Mom... I'm back."
Chen Ling, with a dizzy head, subconsciously prepares to change shoes at the door, only to find that he has been barefoot from the start. At this moment, the soles of his feet and the gaps between his toes are almost filled with mud, leaving two big black footprints on the floor.
The two figures sitting by the dining table now see the crimson-clad Chen Ling pushing the door in, and their pupils contract violently!
"You... you..."
The man's Adam's apple moves, and he opens his mouth wide, looking like he's seen a ghost.
"Mom... is there any water at home? I'm so thirsty." After returning home, Chen Ling's spirit relaxes completely, and he is on the verge of unconsciousness. He mumbles to himself and stumbles into the kitchen, picking up the bucket from the water dispenser and drinking greedily.
Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle...
In the kitchen, the crimson-clad figure is like a beast, greedily swallowing water.
The water dripping from the corner of his mouth forms a puddle on the ground, reflecting the two terrified and pale faces in the living room.
"A... Ah Ling?" The woman forces herself to muster up courage and asks tremblingly, "How... how did you come back?"
Chen Ling holds the water bucket and gulps madly, completely ignoring the woman's words. Then, as if feeling that drinking this way is too slow, he directly stuffs the fist-thick bucket spout into his mouth and bites it to pieces in one go!
The synthetic plastic is chewed hard, and the surging water flows into his mouth, making him feel extremely refreshed!
"I walked back."
A voice answered from behind Chen Ling.
Yes... behind.
At this moment, Chen Ling is still immersed in drinking water, but his voice clearly reaches the ears of the two.
It's as if in the invisible void behind him, there is another crimson-clad Chen Ling standing, spreading his hands and answering matter-of-factly.
"The rain is a bit heavy, I think I got lost."
"I seem to have fallen a few times on the way, and my shoes are also gone..."
"Mom, I made the floor dirty. If it's not urgent, wait until I get up tomorrow to clean it up... I'm too sleepy now."
Looking at the hair-raising scene in front of them, the man and woman in the living room only feel a chill at the back of their necks. The kerosene lamp in the glass cover keeps shaking, as if an invisible palm is playing tricks on the wick.
They are pale but stand stiffly in place, daring not to move.
Finally, the bucket is drained.
Chen Ling wipes his mouth, puts down the bucket, then turns around, leaving a black footprint with each step as he stumbles towards his bedroom...
"Dad, Mom... you should go to bed early too. Good night."
He slurs a sentence, closes the door behind him, and then there is a dull thud as something heavy falls onto the bed.
The living room falls into dead silence.
I don't know how long it takes. The two figures, like sculptures, slowly turn their heads... and look at each other.
The shaking wick stabilizes, and the eerie kerosene lamp brightly illuminates the dim living room. They sit on the chairs trembling, with no trace of blood on their faces.
"He... is back." The man speaks hoarsely, "How is this possible..."
"If he is really Ah Ling..."
"Then who did we kill last night?"