I'm no thespian deity.

"Who... am I?"

Rumble—

Pale lightning flashed through the inky clouds.

The rain poured down wildly, and the thunderstorm, as if in divine wrath, drenched the muddy ground. In the rippling reflection of a puddle, a figure dressed in vermilion was fragmented.

It was a young man wearing a large red opera robe. He staggered through the mud as if he were drunk. His wide sleeves fluttered in the fierce wind, and the mud and sand on the surface of the opera robe were washed away by the rain. That blood-like scarlet was shocking in the darkness of the night.

"Stop making noise... Stop it!"

"Shut up, all of you!"

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

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

The young man's wet black hair hung down to his eyebrows. His dazed pupils were filled with confusion. As he laboriously moved forward, he hugged his head with both hands, as if struggling to recall something.

His angry shouts echoed in the deserted street, but they didn't travel far before being drowned out by the endless curtain of rain.

Plop—

In the dim light, his body was tripped by a protruding stone, and he fell heavily to the ground!

A streak of scarlet blood rolled down from the young man's forehead. He lay there stupidly, and suddenly, as if he had remembered something, a glimmer of light lit up in his cloudy eyes.

"Chen Ling..."

A name suddenly flashed through his mind.

The moment he uttered these two words, a fragment of memory floated out from the endless whispers that almost burst his head and merged with this weak body.

"What is this... Time travel?"

Chen Ling frowned tightly. He kept digesting the memories of this body, and his brain ached as if it were being torn apart.

His name was Chen Ling, 28 years old, an intern director at a theater in the capital city. After the theater performance that day, he was alone on the stage, designing and arranging the actors' movements. Then, a violent earthquake struck. He only felt a pain in his head and completely lost consciousness.

Now, thinking about it carefully, he was most likely killed by a falling spotlight...

At this moment, Chen Ling was also gradually digesting the memories of this body. To his surprise, the original owner of this body was also named Chen Ling, but the two had completely different basic understandings of the world. The fragmented memories fought each other, and Chen Ling felt as if his head was about to explode.

He took deep breaths continuously and struggled to get up from the ground. The opera robe was a mess of black and red patches, looking extremely embarrassed.

For some reason, his body was extremely heavy, just like the feeling of being completely drained after staying up for four or five days to write a play...

"Go home first..."

His tired body and fragmented thoughts made it almost impossible for him to think. He could only rely on the instincts 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 had memories of this place. He would take this road every day after taking care of his younger brother at the clinic. Under normal circumstances, it was only a two or three-minute walk from here to home.

But for him at this moment, this journey was unheralded long.

The rain, with its biting cold, flowed all over Chen Ling's body. He couldn't help but shiver all over. After enduring the cold and fatigue and walking in the rain for ten minutes, he finally arrived in front of the door of the house 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.

Creak—

The warm light spilled out from the room, illuminating a corner of the dark and rainy night and also illuminating 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 a little by this single lamp.

He stepped into the room and saw two figures sitting on either side of the dining table. Their eyes were red, as if they had just cried.

Hearing the sound of the door opening, the two were stunned for a moment and then turned their heads at the same time.

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

Chen Ling, with his dazed head, instinctively prepared to change his shoes at the door, but then he realized that he had been barefoot from the start. At this moment, the soles of his feet and the spaces between his toes were almost filled with mud, and he had already stepped on two big black footprints on the floor.

At this moment, the two figures sitting by the dining table, upon seeing the red-robed Chen Ling who had pushed the door open, had their pupils contract violently!

"You... You..."

The man's Adam's apple rolled, and he opened his mouth wide, looking as if he had seen a ghost.

"Mom... Is there any water at home? I'm so thirsty." After coming home, Chen Ling's spirit completely relaxed, and his consciousness was on the verge of fainting. While mumbling to himself, he stumbled into the kitchen and picked up the water bucket on the water dispenser and drank greedily.

Gulp, gulp, gulp...

In the kitchen, the figure in the red robe was like a wild beast, swallowing the water greedily.

The water seeping out from the corner of his mouth dripped onto the ground, forming a puddle that reflected the two pale and terrified faces in the living room.

"A... A Ling?" The woman mustered up the courage with difficulty and stammered, "How... How did you get back?"

Chen Ling was holding the water bucket and drinking frantically, completely ignoring the woman's words. Then, as if he thought it was too slow to drink like this, he directly stuffed the thick head of the water bucket into his mouth and bit it to pieces in one bite!

The synthetic plastic was chewed forcefully, and the gushing water poured into his mouth. It was so refreshing!

"I walked back."

A voice came from behind Chen Ling.

Yes... from behind.

At this moment, Chen Ling was still immersively drinking water, but his voice clearly reached the ears of the two people.

It was as if there was another red-robed Chen Ling standing in the invisible void behind him, spreading his hands and answering matter-of-factly.

"The rain was a bit heavy, and I seem to have gotten lost."

"I seem to have fallen a few times on the way, and I lost my shoes too..."

"Mom, I've dirtied the floor. If it's not urgent, wait for me to clean it up when I wake up tomorrow... I'm so sleepy now."

Looking at this creepy scene in front of them, the man and the woman in the living room only felt a chill run down the back of their necks. The kerosene lamp in the glass lamp swayed continuously, as if there was an invisible hand playfully playing with the wick.

Their faces were deathly pale, but they just stood there stiffly, not daring to move at all.

Finally, the water bucket was emptied.

Chen Ling wiped his mouth while putting down the water bucket. Then he turned around, leaving black footprints one by one on the floor, and stumbled towards his bedroom...

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

He mumbled something incoherently, closed the door behind him, and then there was a dull thud of a heavy object falling onto the bed.

The living room fell into a deathly silence.

I don't know how long it had passed before the two figures, which were like sculptures, stiffly turned their heads... and looked at each other.

The swaying wick returned to stability, and the eerie kerosene lamp barely illuminated the dim living room. They sat on the chairs tremblingly, with no trace of blood on their faces.

"He... He's back." The man said hoarsely, "How is this possible..."

"If he really is A Ling..."

"Then who was it that we killed last night...?