"Mummy, mummy, please stop crying."
A little trembling voice called out.
That was the first thing Feng Liang heard as he slowly opened his eyes, regaining consciousness. The words reached him before anything else did — before the light, before the pain, before the smell. Just that small voice, and the sound of a woman crying somewhere close.
He tried opening his mouth. It felt like a rat had died inside. He breathed slowly, inhaling a dense smell of alcohol that sat heavy in the air around him, his mouth sour from the taste, his throat raw and thick. He swallowed once and wished he hadn't.
He looked up at the ceiling. Morning light was filling the room, pale and flat, falling across walls that had nothing on them. It looked completely different from anywhere he knew. He lay still for a moment, staring upward, not sure where he was or why his head hurt so much. The pain was deep and dull, settled behind his eyes like something that had been there for a long time.
He tilted his head sideways.
There, two figures stood far away from him. A young woman and a little girl holding her hand, the girl still crying, her small shoulders moving with it. A mother and her daughter.
He grunted — just a small sound, barely anything — and saw how the two of them flinched at the same time. Their bodies pulled back the same way, the same instant. He could see the fear in their eyes clearly from where he lay. Wide and fixed on him. Waiting.
Feng Liang couldn't understand this situation at all. Who were these two, and why were they looking at him as though he were some kind of monster? He moved his hand and pushed himself up to sit properly, getting a proper look at the room around him.
The whole place looked like a junkyard. Trash scattered across the floor with nowhere it hadn't reached. A window with no curtains, bare and open to the flat morning light. A small wardrobe pushed against the wall, one handle hanging loose off its door. The kind of room that hadn't been cared for in a long time, by someone who had long since stopped caring.
His eyes landed back on those two.
Then it all came back without warning. Two different memories came clashing down at once inside his head, colliding hard, and before he could hold himself together he let out a scream.
The two figures immediately cowered, moving back against the wall, the little girl burying herself against her mother's side.
Feng Liang finally calmed down. He sat with it. Looking at the two in front of him, he understood now why they were like that. Why they flinched. Why they pressed themselves back. Why the little girl had already stopped crying the moment he first moved — stopped completely and gone silent.
Rage boiled in his heart.
This body. The original owner of this body deserves death a thousand times.
The last thing I remember was drinking wine and going to bed. That doesn't matter for now, Feng Liang thought, his jaw tight.
"Hmm… water," he said.
Then it landed. What am I even thinking — these two are probably too scared to even speak to me right now.
He looked at them. From across the room, a trembling voice answered anyway, small and careful, pointing in the direction of the restroom.
Feng Liang stood up slowly. His stomach twisted as he rose, a sick rolling feeling that climbed up into his chest. He moved past the two of them and walked toward the restroom.
He walked in. He turned on the tap, brought the water up with both hands and brushed it hard across his face, washing the sleep and the stench away. He rinsed his sour mouth. Spat. Stood there with the water still running, both hands on the edge of the basin.
Then he looked up.
A different man was looking back at him from the mirror.
Li Feng.