Chapter 1: Rain
(This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation)
For over twenty years, Yu Sheng had always thought of himself as perfectly ordinary, leading a life so unremarkable that it barely deserved mention. He lived in a plain home, ate simple meals, and made no fuss about where he worked or the path he took each day. He had never dreamed it would be any different. He had believed, quite firmly, that this ordinary life would carry on until he quietly reached its end, slipping away without any grand stories or excitement. But now those ordinary days felt as if they belonged to someone else, in a past that seemed far, far away.
The sky overhead was heavy and grim. Thick gray clouds drifted in from the northeast, spreading out like lumps of old cotton, covering the city in a woolen gloom. The air tasted damp, as though rain would begin falling at any moment.
Yu Sheng hurried along the street, the plastic bag in his hand weighted down by freshly bought vegetables and a few seasonings. He had just left the supermarket, and now he slipped quickly through the thinning crowd, crossing the street as the daylight faded. He wanted to get home before the weather broke.
Pausing in front of a small shop, he lifted his head and stared at the sign above its door. He stood still for several seconds, as if searching for something familiar in the words or the colors, before pulling his gaze away and marching forward once more. The street behind him was growing quieter, the chatter of people drifting off. The city—vast, towering Boundary City—seemed to be settling into a hush, as if holding its breath before the storm.
Yu Sheng looked ahead, eyes drifting to a commercial street lit by old-fashioned storefront lamps. Normally, he would have felt comfortable here; after all, this was his hometown. He had been raised in Boundary City and knew its streets, shops, and corners almost by heart. Yet, as he stood there in the gloom, a strange and unsettling sense of unfamiliarity washed over him. It was as if something in the air had shifted, making everything he saw look oddly out of place.
Indeed, unfamiliarity was the word for it. He had lived in Boundary City for more than twenty years, but now it felt as foreign as a distant land. Some places still looked roughly the same, but many did not. This was not the Boundary City he remembered. The central building had once been called Boyuan Tower, not “Director’s Tower.” The intersection at Siyuan Street used to have a solid wall, but now a small shop had sprouted there instead. And his old family home certainly hadn’t been replaced by that vast, shabby block of apartments deep in the old town.
But these differences weren’t the only strange things. There were others—oddities that made no sense at all. There were old-fashioned telephone booths, appearing suddenly at street corners, looking as though they had stepped out of the previous century. Steam-powered trains hissed and rattled above the city’s rooftops late at night, when no one seemed to notice. Empty classrooms stood, echoing with voices reciting lessons in rooms where no students could be seen. And there was that unnaturally tall, thin black shape that would sometimes linger under a streetlamp on a rainy evening, like a scarecrow set adrift in the drizzle.
Yu Sheng glanced upward at a nearby streetlamp. Sure enough, one of those shapes was there. It looked like a spindly figure, three or four meters tall, with a face so dark you couldn’t make out its features. It stood completely still, as if carved from shadow. And, as always, it seemed to sense Yu Sheng’s gaze. It turned its dark, empty face toward him, silently watching.
People passed beneath that looming figure without any reaction at all. Pedestrians walked right through it, as though its body was nothing more than a trick of the light. They didn’t see it. No one saw it—no one except Yu Sheng.
Yu Sheng’s heart fluttered. He refused to meet that empty stare for more than a few seconds. Instead, he tore his eyes away, forcing himself to act as if nothing had happened. He hurried forward, turning onto a different street to avoid it. His heart still thumped a little too hard against his ribs.
He did not understand if it was the city that had changed or if something had changed within him. He only knew that life had ceased being ordinary two months ago.
He remembered that day clearly. It had been a bright, sunny morning, and he had opened his front door, meaning to pop out and buy some oranges at the corner store. It had seemed like such a simple errand. But that day—on that morning—he had stepped out into a place that no longer matched his memory. It was the last time he ever saw the familiar interior of his home. Ever since that moment, his own front door had vanished, along with everything else that used to be his normal life.
He had tried to reason it out. Perhaps he had stumbled into another dimension, a parallel world that looked almost—but not quite—like his old hometown. Maybe the doorway back home had vanished the instant he crossed through it. Another thought was that something inside him had changed at that exact moment. Maybe he was still in the same city, but now he perceived a hidden layer beneath the surface, seeing the impossible, the unreal—things that ordinary people could no longer detect.
But in the end, none of these explanations mattered. Whatever had happened, he couldn’t return to that safe and ordinary world. This new, sprawling version of Boundary City felt like an endless forest of concrete and steel, full of twisted shapes and lurking things. In the short two months since that fateful morning, Yu Sheng had scrambled to adjust, to carve out some kind of daily routine amid the strangeness.
Luckily, in this bizarre city, he was still “Yu Sheng.” He still had a proper ID card and a legal address, along with a bit of savings in the bank. He even had a job—though it was somewhat unreliable—still recorded in official files. If he had really crossed into a new world, at least he had avoided those dreadful questions that so many travelers between worlds must face: “Who am I now? Where exactly am I? How do I prove that I belong here?” At least the bureaucracy of this modern metropolis recognized him, and he was spared the trouble of being treated like a ghost who lacked all the proper papers.
He considered, for a moment, how terrible it would have been if he had appeared in a more chaotic time or place—an age without order or a lawless alternate world. There, he might have been arrested as a spy or mistaken for some unearthly creature. He pictured himself thrown into prison, executed, or even boiled up by goblins deep in a cave. The absurdity of these thoughts almost made him laugh as he passed into an old alley beside the commercial street.
Overhead, the sky grew darker still, and as evening thickened, the unusual sights began to multiply. In the corner of his vision, shaky silhouettes danced across the worn walls of tall buildings. A cat leaped suddenly from one of these trembling shadows. It bounded across a stray beam of light that seemed to appear from nowhere at all and paused, turning its bright eyes on Yu Sheng. The cat let out two sharp meows, then melted away with the raindrops that had begun to fall, disappearing into puddles that burst into droplets against the pavement.
The rain had started—earlier than he expected. The wind blew colder now, slipping under his clothes with a creeping chill. Yu Sheng cursed under his breath, lifting the plastic grocery bag over his head as if it could shield him. He quickened his pace. If he hadn’t tried to avoid that creepy black figure under the streetlamp, he could have taken a shorter route home. Now he was stuck in this strange alley, drenched and shivering.
Thinking back to that unnerving shadow, Yu Sheng felt a pang of regret. He knew that most of these odd things he saw were harmless if left alone. They were unsettling, yes, but rarely did they attack him. Still, he had avoided that scarecrow-like shape on instinct. Now it seemed his detour had only made things worse. The rain was getting colder, unnaturally so, and he had a sudden feeling of unease. He picked up his pace again, shoulders hunched.
The temperature plummeted. His breath came out in misty white puffs, and each raindrop felt sharp and icy against his skin, as if tiny blades were falling from the sky. The ground under his feet was turning strangely smooth and reflective, almost like a mirror. It was as if the rain itself was warping the world around him.
Yu Sheng’s heart gave a nervous lurch. Something was wrong. Even in this strange city, nothing had ever felt like this before. There was a hostility in the air, a kind of hatred. He realized, with a sinking feeling, that he could sense malice in the very raindrops soaking his clothes.
He flung his head around, searching the alley for anyone else who might be caught in this bizarre downpour, but there was no one. Not a single soul. The narrow alley was as empty as a forgotten painting. The buildings on either side rose like silent giants, the distant lights of the city blurred and dreamlike. It felt as though everything had been pulled into a quieter, colder world, leaving only Yu Sheng and this merciless rain.
He needed shelter—any shelter. His eyes fell on an old iron door set into one of the buildings, likely a back entrance to a shop or a storage room. Without hesitation, he ran to it, the rain stinging harder at his neck and back. He raised a fist and pounded on the metal.
“Is anyone—” he began, but his voice froze in his throat. He stared, disbelieving, at his hand. Instead of hitting a real door, he had struck a flat surface of painted bricks. The door was just an image on the wall, a careful illusion. The windows next to it were painted fakes as well.
A soft rustle caught his ear, and he turned slowly, heart beating fast. From the mirrored surface of the wet street, something began to rise. A shape pulled itself out of the darkness, as if climbing through a layer of water. It was a creature—a frog, of all things. But no ordinary frog. This one stood nearly a meter tall. It had a glossy, slippery body, and its head was covered with countless blinking eyes. Under the rain’s dim light, those eyes shone like tiny, cruel beads.
The frog’s wide mouth opened, and in an instant, a long tongue lashed out. It shot through the air, aimed straight at Yu Sheng’s heart. Yu Sheng, alarmed and furious, swore under his breath and moved before he even had time to think. He darted aside and pulled a small baton from his pocket, preparing to strike back.
But the frog’s tongue was unnaturally fast. It twisted in midair, changing direction in a blink. Yu Sheng felt a sharp, horrible pain in his back. The tongue had gone right through him, skewering his heart from behind. He blinked, stunned, staring down at the slimy appendage that now poked through his chest. He could practically feel his heartbeat against it.
“…You bastard,” he thought numbly, words only in his mind, “That’s my heart…”
A moment later, everything went black, and then, he died.
I thank thee, oh great Bcat