"Who... am I?"
CRACK!
Pale lightning ripped through ink-black clouds.
Rain lashed down, a furious, god-like deluge drenching the muddy earth. In the rippling reflections of the puddles, a figure in vermilion red appeared fractured, broken.
It was a young man, cloaked in a grand, crimson opera robe. He swayed drunkenly, staggering through the thick mud, his wide sleeves whipping in the gale. Rain sluiced the grime from his robe, leaving that blood-like scarlet shockingly vivid in the oppressive night.
"Stop it... stop it!"
"Shut up, all of you!"
"I'm almost there... almost... I'm going to remember..."
"I have a name... a name of my own!"
The youth's wet, dark hair clung to his brows, his unfocused eyes clouded with confusion. He shuffled forward with difficulty, clutching his head in both hands as if wrestling with a lost memory.
His furious shouts echoed down the deserted street, quickly swallowed by the endless downpour.
THUD!
In the gloom, his foot caught on a protruding stone, sending him sprawling to the ground!
A trickle of scarlet blood welled from his temple. He lay there, dazed, then suddenly, as if a switch had flipped, a faint light sparked in his murky eyes.
"William..."
A name flashed through his mind like a lightning bolt.
The instant he uttered those two words, a fragment of memory detached from the torrent of whispers that had threatened to split his skull, merging with his weakened body.
"What is this... transmigration?"
William's brows furrowed. He struggled to process the memories of this new body, his mind throbbing as if it were being torn apart.
His name was William, 28 years old, an intern director at a theater in the capital. That day, after a performance, he was alone on stage, choreographing the actors' movements when a violent earthquake hit. He'd felt a searing pain in his head and then nothing.
Thinking clearly now, he was almost certainly crushed by a falling stage light...
And now, William was slowly absorbing the memories of this new body. To his astonishment, this body's owner was also named William, yet their fundamental understanding of the world was drastically different. The fragmented memories clashed violently, making his head feel like it would explode.
He took deep, shuddering breaths, struggling to push himself up from the ground. His opera robe was stained with patches of black and red, a picture of utter disarray.
For reasons unknown, his body felt impossibly heavy, a bone-deep exhaustion like a writer hollowed out after four or five straight nights of tireless scripting.
"Just... get home."
His weary body and fractured mind made coherent thought almost impossible. He moved on instinct, allowing this borrowed body to guide him toward "home."
He had no idea how he'd ended up here, but the original owner's memories held the route. This was the path he took every day, returning from the clinic where he looked after his younger brother. Usually, it was a mere two or three minutes from here to the house.
But for him, now, this short walk stretched into an eternity.
The rain, icy and biting, seeped into William's very bones. He shivered uncontrollably, enduring the bitter cold and crushing fatigue. After ten grueling minutes in the downpour, he finally reached the familiar front door from his fragmented memories.
William fumbled in his pockets, finding no keys.
With an almost automatic motion, he reached beneath the newspaper box by the door and pulled out a spare. The lock clicked, and the door swung open.
Creaaaak—
Warm light spilled from within, illuminating a small corner of the dark, rainy night and casting a glow on William's pale face.
The sight of that light instantly relaxed William's taut nerves. The cold and exhaustion that clung to him seemed to recede, if only a little, in its gentle warmth.
He stepped inside. Two figures sat at the dining table, their eyes red-rimmed, as if they'd just been weeping.
At the sound of the door opening, they froze, then simultaneously turned their heads.
"Dad... Mom... I'm home."
His head swimming, William instinctively moved to take off his shoes at the entrance, only to realize he was already barefoot. His soles and toes were caked with mud, leaving two large, dark footprints on the clean floor.
The two figures at the dining table, witnessing the red-robed William step through the door, felt their pupils contract violently!
"You... you..."
The man's Adam's apple bobbed. He gaped, looking as if he'd just seen a ghost.
"Mom... is there any water? I'm so thirsty." With the tension of the journey gone, William's mind completely relaxed, his consciousness teetering on the edge of collapse. He mumbled to himself as he stumbled into the kitchen, grabbing the water cooler bottle and drinking greedily.
Gulp, gulp, gulp...
In the kitchen, the figure in red drank like a wild animal, swallowing the water in huge, desperate gulps.
Water dripped from the corners of his mouth, forming puddles on the floor that reflected the terrified, pale faces of the two people in the living room.
"Ah... William?" The woman forced herself to speak, her voice trembling. "How... how did you get back?"
The Unsettling Return
William gulped down water from the bucket, oblivious to the woman's words. He then seemed to decide it was too slow, shoving the fist-sized opening of the bucket directly into his mouth and biting it clean off!
The synthetic plastic crunched under his powerful chewing, and a torrent of water poured into his mouth, utterly refreshing!
"I walked home."
A voice emanated from behind William.
Yes... behind him.
At this moment, William was still engrossed in guzzling water, yet his voice clearly reached the ears of the two people. It was as if, in the unseen void behind him, another Wlillian, still in the red robe, stood with open hands, answering matter-of-factly.
"The rain was pretty heavy; I think I got lost."
"I seem to have fallen a few times on the way; my shoes are gone..."
"Mom, I've dirtied the floor. If it's not urgent, just let me clean it tomorrow when I wake up... I'm too tired now."
Watching the spine-chilling scene unfold before them, the man and woman in the living room felt a cold dread creep up their necks. The flame of the kerosene lamp in the glass holder flickered wildly, as if an invisible hand playfully toyed with the wick.
Their faces were ashen, but they remained rigidly in place, too paralyzed to move.
Finally, the bucket was drained.
William wiped his mouth, set the bucket down, then turned. Leaving a trail of dark footprints across the floor, he stumbled towards his bedroom...
"Dad, Mom... you two should go to bed early too. Goodnight."
He mumbled a farewell, closed the door behind him, and then came the dull thud of a heavy object hitting the bed.
The living room fell into a deathly silence.
After what felt like an eternity, the two figures, frozen like statues, stiffly turned their heads... to face each other.
The flickering wick stabilized, and the eerie kerosene lamp barely illuminated the dim living room. They sat trembling in their chairs, their faces utterly drained of color.
"He... he's back," the man rasped, his voice barely a whisper. "How is this possible..."
"If he really is William..."
"Then who did we kill last night?"