For twenty years, Rowan believed he was an ordinary man living an ordinary life and doing ordinary things. This ordinariness was destined to continue into his foreseeable future, until the day his unremarkable life simply ended. He'd always thought so, but those days seemed a long time ago now. The sky was a bruised canvas, and drowsy clouds were gradually spreading from the northeast like thick cotton, blanketing the entire city. The air hung heavy with humidity, pregnant with impending rain. Perhaps it would fall in ten minutes.
Clutching a bag of freshly bought groceries, Rowan merged with the thinning crowd and hurried across the street toward his home as the light continued to fade. As he passed a storefront, he subconsciously paused, his gaze drawn to the sign above the door. He stared for several seconds before tearing his eyes away and pressing onward.
The number of pedestrians dwindled further, and the vast city seemed to hush in anticipation of the storm. Rowan looked up at the commercial street ahead, now illuminated by shop lights. Though it was a familiar sight, an indescribable sense of strangeness coiled in his gut. Yes, a strangeness. He had lived in this city for over two decades, yet now this ridiculously huge, seemingly boundless "Twilight Crossing" felt utterly foreign.
This city wasn't the "real" one in his memory. While some places were eerily similar, more were starkly different. The Twilight Crossing he grew up in wasn't nearly so immense. He remembered the building in the city center being called the Longview Tower Building, not the current "Director Tower." He remembered the intersection of Origins Street originally having a bare wall, and his childhood home wasn't a sprawling, dilapidated old house deep within the old city. More importantly, the city of his memories wouldn't have had so many "not quite right" things. This included old-fashioned telephone booths that appeared randomly at certain intersections and were painted in a style from a bygone century, steam locomotives that chugged over rooftops late at night, empty classrooms where the phantom sound of reading persisted, and more.
Standing beneath the streetlamp in the evening, just as the rain threatened, was a dark shadow as thin and tall as a telephone pole. Rowan raised his head and stared at the streetlamp not far off. A reedy, human-like figure stood stiffly there, three or four meters tall, with a dark, featureless face on top. The shadow seemed to sense his gaze yet remained motionless, silently confronting him from a distance. Passersby hurried beneath the tall, thin shadow, seemingly oblivious to its bizarre presence. Some even walked directly through the shadow, entirely unaffected.
Only Rowan could see it. After a few seconds of pointless staring, he averted his gaze, suppressed his pounding heart, and took a detour, quickening his pace.
He had never been sure if the city had suddenly changed or if he had. But he vividly remembered his ordinary life changing abruptly two months ago. One sunny morning, he pushed open his front door to buy oranges from the small supermarket at the intersection. That was the last time he pushed open "the door of his own home." After that, he never saw his old home again. He had tried to analyze it, speculating that it might be some kind of time travel. When he opened his door, he stepped into a parallel world similar to his hometown. He couldn't find his way back because the spacetime passage collapsed the moment he crossed the threshold.
Another possibility was that something "strange" had happened to him. When he stepped out the door, or sometime thereafter, due to an unknown influence, he became "different from ordinary people." His eyes began to perceive "things" hidden beneath the surface. He still lived in a familiar place, but he could no longer see its familiar aspects.
But these analyses were meaningless. In any case, he could no longer return to the "ordinary and normal world" he remembered. This strange, colossal city was like a boundless forest, trapping a confused wanderer in its gloomy, intertwined branches. Two months simply weren't enough for Rowan to uncover this "forest's" secrets. In fact, he had only just adapted to this strange yet familiar "new home" and had barely resumed a semblance of daily life here.
Fortunately, he was still "Rowan" in this discordant boundary city. He had a valid identity, a legal address, savings, and an unreliable livelihood. If this was indeed some form of "time travel," he was fortunate to avoid the common traveler's dilemma: "Who am I? Where am I? Where do I apply for an ID card?" In this orderly, modern metropolis, these questions were particularly crucial. After all, it wasn't easy for a time traveler to shed illegal status in a city with such a robust population management system.
Of course, from another angle, traveling to an older society with chaotic order or a barbaric alternate world could present other minor issues. For example, he could be executed on the spot as an enemy spy, an alien invader, or an evil creature emerging from the ground. Alternatively, he could be chopped up and stewed as temporary rations by cave goblins. As he took the old path beside the commercial street, heading home via an alternate route, Rowan's mind drifted through these random, sudden associations.
The sky grew darker, and it seemed precisely because of this increasing gloom that the "not quite right" things slowly began to multiply. At the edge of his vision, shaky figures were reflected on the mottled, ancient walls of the buildings. An agile cat leaped from a shadow on a wall, scaled a beam of light, meowed twice in Rowan's direction, and melted into the raindrops, splashing on the ground.
The rain started earlier than expected.
The wind turned colder and swirled like a tangible substance, piercing the gaps in his clothes. Rowan sighed and held his shopping bag over his head, quickening his pace. Had he not wanted to avoid the dark shadow under the streetlamp, he could have walked the main avenue and gotten home faster. His house was strange and eerie, but at least it was a shelter from the wind and rain. Thinking of the shadow, Rowan felt annoyed. From experience, he knew the strange things he saw were basically harmless. If he didn't provoke them, they'd ignore him, just as ordinary people ignored them. Still, despite this knowledge, he instinctively avoided anything that looked too bizarre. Now, it seemed that taking a detour hadn't been a good idea.
It was getting colder.
For rain, this was unusually cold.
Rowan noticed his breath slowly turning into an icy mist. The raindrops felt like sharp nails hard, cold, and painful hitting him. The ground rapidly transformed into a slick mirror under the freezing downpour.
A profound uneasiness jolted Rowan. Something was terribly wrong. Even in this strange city, he had never experienced anything like this before. Unlike the mere "shadows" that were unsettling at worst, he sensed malice this time.
This rain was malicious. He looked up suddenly and saw that the small road, which had been bustling with pedestrians, was now utterly empty. He was alone on the narrow street. He could see no one, and the distant lights had grown hazy and unreal. The intersection at the end of the street seemed blocked by an unseen force that was simultaneously drawing closer and receding further. Only rain surrounded him, cold rain amidst cold, closed buildings.
He felt as if the entire world were raining just for him.
Rowan took a deep breath and ran toward the nearest building. An old iron door that looked like the back entrance of a shop stood before him. He had to find someone, anyone, as soon as possible. The raindrops had become sharp as knife blades, and the temperature had plummeted to the point where every breath caused a needle-like pain in his lungs. In a few desperate strides, Rowan reached the door and slapped his hand against it.
"Someone"
His eyes widened and his voice cut off abruptly.
He had slapped the wall. The door was painted on the wall.
The nearby windows were painted on the wall, too.
A rustling sound came from nearby.
Rowan slowly turned his head toward the noise.
In the freezing, knife-like rain, a strange thing slowly floated up from the mirror-smooth surface of the water. Emerging from the dark shadow, it stared at Rowan with chilling indifference. It was a frog, nearly a meter tall. Its head was densely covered in eyes, and the freezing rain reflected off its skin.
The frog opened its mouth, and a sharp tongue shot straight toward its prey's heart.
"Fuck you..."
Despite his elegant vocabulary, Rowan displayed surprising agility and reacted instantly. Before the expletive could fully leave his mouth, his body moved. He suddenly dodged to the side, drawing the self-defense baton he usually carried from his pocket with one hand. He stepped forward, twisted his waist, and leaned into a strike.
The frog's tongue angled sharply in midair and pierced Rowan's heart from behind.
Rowan: "...?" He blinked and watched the frog's tongue stick out from his chest with a heart beating rapidly at its tip.
"Fuck the bastard! This thing is mine!"
He thought, cursing under his breath.
Then, he died.