For more than twenty years of his life, Darian had always believed himself to be just an ordinary person living an ordinary life, doing ordinary things. And in the foreseeable future, this ordinariness was destined to continue until the day his life ended, as ordinarily as it had always been.
Yes, that's what he had always thought though those days now felt like a lifetime ago.
The sky was gloomy. Thick, heavy clouds spread from the northeast like dense cotton batting, gradually blanketing the entire city. The air was saturated with dampness, and within it, rain was brewing perhaps it would begin to fall within the next ten minutes.
Carrying vegetables and seasonings he had just bought from the supermarket, Darian hurried through the streets, blending into the crowd of pedestrians, making his way home under the increasingly dim sky.
As he passed a store, he stopped instinctively, staring at the sign above the entrance. He gazed at it for several seconds before finally looking away and continuing forward in haste.
Pedestrians became increasingly sparse along the road. The vast city seemed to be settling into silence in the atmosphere of impending rain. Darian raised his gaze toward the commercial street ahead, illuminated by the lights from the shops below. Although it was a familiar view, a vague and indescribable sense of unfamiliarity rose unbidden within him.
Yes, unfamiliarity. Though he had lived in this city for over twenty years, now, this massive and seemingly boundless "Boundary City" felt entirely foreign to him.
Because this city was no longer the one he remembered. Although some places still looked familiar, most of it felt off just not quite right. The Boundary City he had grown up in was never this enormous. He remembered the skyscraper in the city center being called Boyuan Tower, not the current "Council Spire." He remembered that there used to be a wall at the Sifang Street intersection where there was now a shop. And his real home wasn't that giant, decrepit old house deep in the old district that now looked on the verge of collapsing.
And more importantly, in his memories, there had never been so many... "off" things in the city. Things that included but were not limited to old-fashioned telephone booths with an aesthetic straight out of the last century appearing randomly at certain intersections; steam-powered train engines gliding over rooftops late at night; empty classrooms echoing with the sound of reading; and…
On a rainy evening, standing beneath a streetlight, a tall, pitch-black figure, skinny as a utility pole.
Darian looked up, staring hard at a nearby streetlight. A figure, tall as a dried reed, stood motionless beneath it. The humanoid shadow was three to four meters tall, with a featureless black face where no facial details could be seen. It seemed to have noticed him too, but remained still, silently locked in a distant stare with Darian.
Rushed pedestrians passed right beneath the tall, slender shadow as though it wasn't there at all. Some even walked straight through it without the slightest reaction.
Only Darian could see it.
So, after a few seconds of meaningless eye contact, he looked away, suppressed his quickening heartbeat, and hurried off in another direction.
Darian was never quite sure whether it was the city that had changed all of a sudden, or if something had changed within himself. But he remembered clearly that the ordinary, normal life he once had had drifted away on a certain morning two months ago.....
He remembered that on that sunny morning, he had pushed open the front door of his home, planning to buy some oranges from the nearby corner store.
That was the last time he ever opened "his own front door." After that, he never saw the home from his memories again.
He had thought about it, it might have been some kind of "transmigration." The moment he stepped out of his door, he might have crossed into a parallel world that looked similar to his hometown but wasn't. And he could no longer find the door that would lead him back to the world he came from, because the passage through time and space collapsed the instant he stepped through it.
Another possibility was that something had "changed" within him. Perhaps the transformation occurred when he stepped out of the house or sometime shortly thereafter. Due to some unknown influence, he had become "different." And now, his eyes could see certain things hidden beneath the surface of reality. He still lived in the same place he had always known—only, he could no longer see the familiar things the way they were...
But none of these theories really mattered.
Regardless of the cause, he could no longer return to that "ordinary and normal world" of his memories. This strange, enormous city was like a boundless forest, trapping a lost wanderer within its dark, twisted branches and vines. And two short months were nowhere near enough for Darian to uncover the secrets of this "forest."
In truth, he had only just begun to adapt to this familiar-yet-strange "new home," barely managing to resume a semblance of daily life.
Fortunately, he was still "Darian" in this version of Boundary City. He had a valid ID, a legal residence, some modest savings, and a rather unreliable-looking job. If this really was some kind of transmigration, at least he didn't have to face the usual three major problems most transmigrators did: "Who am I, where am I, and where do I go to apply for an ID?"
Given that this was a highly organized modern metropolis, those problems were no small matter. In a society with comprehensive population control systems, trying to escape a "stateless" existence in a place like this would be no easy task.
Of course, if he had ended up in a chaotic ancient society or some lawless fantasy world instead, he would've likely faced a different set of problems like being executed as a spy from a hostile nation, mistaken for an invading alien, labeled a demon from underground, or even hacked up and cooked by cave-dwelling goblins for their next meal...
These absurd, random thoughts flitted through Darian's mind as he walked down an old alley beside the commercial street, taking another route toward "home."
The sky grew darker still. And as it did, the number of those "off" things began to increase.
At the edge of Darian's vision, distorted human figures shimmered against the timeworn walls of the buildings. A swift cat leapt out from a shadow on the wall, gracefully landing on a shaft of light from some unseen source. It meowed twice in Darian's direction, then melted away along with the first drops of rain, splashing into the ground below.
The rain had started earlier than expected.
The wind turned chill. The cold swirled like a living thing, slipping through the seams of his clothing.
Darian clicked his tongue in annoyance, raised the shopping bag over his head, and quickened his pace.
If not for avoiding that shadow under the streetlight, he could've taken the main road home, it would've been faster. That house may have been just as eerie and unfamiliar, but at least it was still shelter from the rain.
Thinking about that shadow made Darian a little frustrated.
From experience, he knew that the bizarre things he saw were generally harmless as long as you didn't actively provoke them. They, too, would ignore him, just as the rest of the world did. Still, despite knowing that, he always instinctively kept his distance from things that looked too... sinister. But as it turned out, today, taking a detour may not have been the smartest decision after all.
It was getting colder.
Unreasonably so, for a rainstorm.
Darian noticed that his breath was slowly turning into frosty mist, and the raindrops falling from the sky felt like sharp nails, striking with a cold, painful force.
The ground, under this freezing rain, was gradually turning into a smooth, mirror-like surface.
A surge of unease snapped Darian to full alert. He realized something was wrong, seriously wrong. Even in this strange city, he had never encountered anything like this before.
Unlike the "shadows" he usually saw an odd and unsightly at most of this time, he felt… malice.
The rain carried malice.
He looked up abruptly, only to find that the path, which moments ago still had a few scattered pedestrians, was now completely empty. The narrow street was devoid of a single soul.
Not a person in sight. Even the lights in the distance had become hazy and unreal, and the intersection at the edge of his vision seemed to shift in and out of reach as if blocked by something invisible. All around him were cold, enclosed buildings and the rain. That cold, relentless rain.
It felt as though the entire world was raining just for him.
Darian took a sharp breath and ran towards the nearest building. There was an old iron door standing there, probably the back entrance to some ground-floor business. whatever it was, he had to find someone. Quickly.
Because the raindrops were beginning to carry a razor's edge, and the air was now so cold that every breath brought a stabbing pain in his lungs.
In just a few hurried steps, Darian reached the door and slammed his hand against it. "Is anyone"
He froze, eyes wide.
His hand hit a wall. The door was painted on the wall.
The nearby windows also painted.
A soft rustling sound came from nearby.
Darian slowly turned his head toward the source of the sound.
In the rain that fell like blades, a strange figure was rising from the mirror-like surface of the ground. It gained a physical form from a pitch-black shadow and stared coldly at Darian.
It was a frog, a nearly one-meter-tall frog, its head densely covered with eyes, its body reflecting the endless rain around them.
The frog opened its mouth. A sharp tongue shot straight toward its prey's heart.
"What the f*ck?!"
Darian's vocabulary was elegant, his reflexes sharp. Before the expletive could fully leave his lips, his body was already reacting. he dodged sideways, one hand reaching into his pocket to pull out a collapsible baton he carried for self-defense, his stance shifting as he lunged forward…
But the frog's tongue swerved mid-air at a sharp angle and pierced straight through Darian's back, impaling him at heart level.
Darian: "...?"
He blinked, watching the frog's tongue protrude from his chest, a heart rapidly beating at its tip.
"...You bastard, that thing's mine…"
He thought that just once in his mind.
And then he died.
(End of Chapter)
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