Chapter 1 The actor returns home
"Who am I?"
Boom--
The pale lightning flashed through the inky clouds,
The rain flowed wildly, and the thunderstorm like the wrath of God poured down on the muddy ground. In the reflection of the rippled puddles, a scarlet figure was shattered.
It was a young man in a red robe. He staggered through the muddy ground like a drunk, and his wide sleeves fluttered in the wind. The mud and sand on the surface of the robe were washed away by the rain, and the blood-like red was shocking in the dark night.
"Stop arguing... Stop arguing!"
"Shut up!"
"I'm about to remember... I'm about to remember..."
"I have a name... A name that belongs to me!"
The boy's wet black hair fell to the tip of his eyebrows, and his scattered eyes were full of confusion. He moved forward with difficulty, holding his head with both hands, as if struggling to remember something.
His roar echoed in the deserted streets, and it did not spread too far before it was drowned in the endless rain curtain.
Plop——
In the dim light, his body was tripped by a protruding stone and fell heavily to the ground!
A streak of scarlet blood rolled down from the boy's forehead. He fell to the ground in a daze. Suddenly, he seemed to remember something, and a glimmer of light appeared in his turbid eyes.
"Chen Ling..."
A name suddenly flashed through his mind.
The moment he read these two words, a fragment of memory floated out from the endless whispers that almost broke his head, and merged with this weak body.
"What is this...travel?"
Chen Ling frowned, he kept digesting the memory of this body, and his brain felt like it was cut apart.
His name is Chen Ling, 28 years old, and he is an intern director of a theater in Beijing. After the theater performance that day, he was alone on the stage designing and arranging the actors' movements. Then a violent earthquake hit. He only felt a pain on the top of his head and completely lost consciousness.
Now thinking about it carefully, he was probably killed by the falling spotlight...
At this time, Chen Ling was also digesting the memory of this body bit by bit. What surprised him was that the owner of this body was also called Chen Ling, but the basic cognition of the world between the two was completely different. The broken memories fought each other, and Chen Ling felt that his mind was about to explode.
He kept taking deep breaths and struggling to get up from the ground. The surface of the costume was black and red, and he was extremely embarrassed.
For some reason, his body was extremely heavy, just like the kind of tiredness that was hollowed out after staying up all night for four or five consecutive days to write the play...
"Let's go home first..."
The tired body and the fragmented thoughts made it almost impossible for him to think. He could only rely on the instinct of this body and walk towards the direction of "home".
Although he didn't know how he got here, the original owner of this body remembered this place. He would take this road every day after taking care of his brother at the clinic. It usually took only two or three minutes to get home from here.
But for him at this moment, this journey was unprecedentedly long.
The rain flowed through Chen Ling's body with a biting cold. He couldn't help shivering all over. After walking in the rain for ten minutes, he finally came to the door in his memory.
Chen Ling fumbled in his pocket for a while and found that he didn't have the key.
So he skillfully took out a spare key from the bottom of the newspaper box by the door and opened the door.
Creaking--
Warm light poured from the house, illuminating a corner of the dark rainy night and Chen Ling's pale face.
The moment he saw the light, Chen Ling's tense nerves naturally relaxed, and the cold and fatigue on his body seemed to be dispelled by the light.
He walked into the house and saw two figures sitting on both sides of the dining table, with red eyes, as if they had just cried.
Hearing the sound of the door opening, the two were stunned at first, and then turned their heads at the same time.
"Dad... Mom... I'm back."
Chen Ling, with a dizzy head, subconsciously prepared to change shoes at the door, but found that he was barefoot from the beginning. At this moment, the soles of his feet and the gaps between his fingers were almost filled with mud, and two big black footprints had been stepped on the floor.
The two figures sitting at the dining table at this moment saw Chen Ling in red pushing the door in, and their pupils contracted violently!
"You... You..."
The man's Adam's apple rolled, and he opened his mouth wide with a look of seeing a ghost.
"Mom... Is there any water at home? I'm so thirsty." After returning home, Chen Ling's spirit was completely relaxed, and his consciousness was on the verge of coma. While mumbling, he stumbled into the kitchen and picked up the bucket on the water dispenser to drink.
Gulp, gurgle, gurgle...
In the kitchen, the red-dressed figure was like a beast, greedily swallowing the water source.
The water seeping from the corners of his mouth dripped onto the ground, gathering into puddles, reflecting the two terrified pale faces in the living room.
"Ah...A Ling?" The woman forced herself to muster up her courage and trembled as she spoke, "How...how did you get back?"
Chen Ling swallowed the water bucket frantically, not hearing the woman's words at all. Then he seemed to think that drinking like this was too slow, so he stuffed the fist-sized bucket head into his mouth and bit it into pieces!
The synthetic plastic was chewed hard, and the rushing water poured into his mouth, making him feel refreshed!
"I walked back."
A voice came from behind Chen Ling.
Yes...behind.
At this moment, Chen Ling was still swallowing water immersively, and his voice fell clearly into the ears of the two people,
It was as if in the invisible void behind him, there stood a red-dressed Chen Ling, spreading her hands and answering matter-of-factly.
"The rain is a bit heavy and I seem to be lost."
"It seems that I fell a few times on the road and my shoes are missing..."
"Mom, I made the floor dirty. If you're not in a hurry, just wait until I get up tomorrow to clean it up...I'm too sleepy now."
Looking at the horrifying scene in front of them, the men and women in the living room felt a chill on the back of their necks. The kerosene lamp in the glass kept shaking, as if there was an invisible hand playing with the wick playfully.
Their faces were pale, but they just stood there stiffly, not daring to move.
Finally, the bucket was drained.
Chen Ling wiped her mouth and put down the bucket. Then she turned around, walked across the floor with black footprints step by step, and stumbled towards her bedroom...
"Dad, Mom... you guys go to bed early too, good night."
He said something vaguely and closed the door behind his back, followed by a muffled sound of a heavy object falling on the bed.
The living room fell into dead silence.
After an unknown amount of time, the two sculpture-like figures turned their heads stiffly... and looked at each other.
The shaking wick returned to stability, and the strange kerosene light barely illuminated the dim living room. They sat tremblingly on the chairs, with no trace of blood on their faces.
"He...is back." The man said hoarsely, "How is this possible..."
"If he is really Ah Ling..."
"Then who did we kill last night...?"