"You've forgotten everything? Then let me give you another clue." The child with the blurred face extended both hands and clamped them around his own throat. "Back then, you lured me into an abandoned tunnel. You said you heard someone calling your name from inside. But once we both entered the tunnel, you stood behind me and suddenly grabbed my neck — just like this!"
The child's head tilted to one side, both hands crushing his neck out of shape. His face slowly swelled, and green veins bulged across his forehead. "Do you remember now? Your fingers sank into my skin little by little, pressing harder and harder…"
The child's voice echoed in Chen Ge's ears. Fragmented images flashed through his mind — the scene before him really did seem to have happened before.
What struck Chen Ge as even stranger was that when he saw the child being strangled, his body instinctively produced a familiar feeling, as if the killer really was him.
"Have I killed someone?" Rain soaked his hair. Chen Ge shook his head and remembered something else.
When he had been deep inside the tunnel doing the fourth Nightmare-level quest, he had seen his childhood self entering the tunnel with an adult.
The scene before him was certainly familiar, but it was different from what the child described. The victim had been himself. It wasn't him killing someone — someone had tried to kill him!
If he hadn't done that Nightmare-level quest before, hadn't seen that scene deep inside the tunnel, then even if Chen Ge didn't believe he was a killer now, he would probably have felt at least a flicker of doubt.
"He might be the real killer from back then. Otherwise, he couldn't know all of this," Chen Ge murmured to himself, shifting his feet toward the child's position, trying to close the distance.
When the child saw that Chen Ge remained composed, he released his hands. His head lolled onto his shoulder. "So you really don't remember?"
The boy's face gradually became clearer under the washing rain. His expression was deeply unsettling — the way he looked at Chen Ge was like looking at his own reflection in a mirror. "You killed me. You killed me with your own hands. That feeling — I'll never forget it. And soon, you'll experience it too."
The child retreated. The dark figure behind him stuffed the boy back into its own body, then stood motionless in place.
Chen Ge was now less than ten meters from the shadow figure. Just as he was about to move closer, a deathly pale hand gently landed on his shoulder.
The repeater crackled with static, and
"Is he dangerous?" Chen Ge had other cards to play. When he lifted his leg to step forward, someone clung to his thigh with a death grip. He looked down to find a boy of three or four baring his teeth and blocking his path.
"
"Two Reds stopping me at once? That shadow figure doesn't even look like a Red. It seems to be nothing more than a shadow?"
Chen Ge halted his steps and went no further.
After a moment, small children's footprints began appearing around the shadow figure. The sounds of children laughing and crying gradually faded away, and the figure's body slowly solidified.
When the last child's crying ceased, the shadow figure regarded Chen Ge in silence for a moment. It matched him exactly in height and build — as though it were Chen Ge's own shadow.
"You killed me."
The body was that of an adult, but the voice that came from the dark figure's mouth was a child's voice — eerie, cold, brimming with malice.
After uttering those final words, its gaze drifted past Chen Ge, looking to something behind him. Then it turned and vanished into the driving rain.