On the ruined street, shattered door and window fragments lay strewn among broken walls and debris.
The wind swept wastepaper across the pitted road surface, producing a thin, whimpering sound.
A-Sang’s head drooped.
His four limbs swung stiffly at unnatural angles as he shuffled along, blended into the equally expressionless crowd, wandering aimlessly down the street.
“Clang—”
The sharp sound of something heavy hitting the ground suddenly rang out from a half-collapsed house by the roadside.
In that instant, every wandering figure stopped dead at the same time.
A-Sang’s neck wrenched around a full 180 degrees.
His turbid eyeballs and the dozen-plus pairs of hollow eyes around him locked onto that shaky, teetering sliding door in unison.
The next second, all the zombies’ originally sluggish movements abruptly became as fierce as wild beasts.
The crowd surged forward like a tide, snarling and howling as they threw themselves at the building.
A-Sang was shoved off balance by the force from behind.
Half a beat too slow, he found himself pinned tightly on the outer edge of the mob.
A low, guttural growl escaped his throat.
His eyes fixed on the dark red seeping through the crack of the door as he fruitlessly pushed forward, his nails carving ear-piercing scratches into the mottled wall.
Only a brief, abrupt scream came from inside the house, quickly drowned out by the sounds of chewing and tearing.
The thick stench of blood rode the wind and flooded his nostrils.
A-Sang’s Adam’s apple bobbed once, but no matter what, he simply could not squeeze inside.
It was then that he glimpsed a faint glimmer of light filtering through a broken window nearby.
A-Sang stopped moving.
He stiffly turned his head, his gaze sweeping past the jostling bodies of his own kind, and shuffled step by step toward that patch of brightness.
The instant his fingertip touched the edge of the window frame, a powerful electric current violently tore through his entire body.
Before he could even let out a muffled groan, his consciousness plummeted into boundless darkness.
…
His ashen consciousness felt like it was submerged in a viscous darkness.
After an indeterminate length of time, a faint tactile sensation pierced through the chaos—water.
Cold, salty, carrying some unfamiliar aura, it rushed eagerly into his nostrils.
A-Sang suddenly choked and coughed violently, his eyes laboriously cracking open a sliver.
In his field of vision, there was only an endless, boundless blue, stretching from above his head all the way to a distant vanishing point.
Occasionally, something white glided past.
The sunlight stung his eyes painfully; his instinct was to shut them, but he was seized by an even stronger sense of utter bewilderment.
Who am I?
The moment this thought surfaced, even A-Sang himself was stunned.
Before this, there had been only one word in his consciousness: eat.
The urge to gnaw, the desire to tear, the instinctual craving for warm blood and flesh…
that had been the entirety of what constituted his “existence.”
But now, those things felt as though they were shrouded by a thin layer of gauze.
They were still there, but no longer the only thing there.
In their place was a head full of question marks and a weakness so profound it made his whole body go limp.
A-Sang simply lay there on his back, his body swaying gently with the undulating waves, his four limbs as stiff as rusted machine parts.
Even lifting a single finger cost him enormous effort.
Time lost all meaning.
He had no idea how long he drifted until a small black dot appeared in his field of view.
The dot grew larger and larger, turning into a wooden boat, and then into several blurry human figures on board.
“Hey!
Looks like there’s someone over there!”
A rough voice carried over the water, composed of syllables he could not understand at all, rising and falling like a strange sort of tune.
A-Sang stared blankly as the figures gathered around.
A net scooped him up, and he was laboriously hauled onto the boat.
The feeling of solid ground beneath his feet (or rather, the boat’s deck) was strange—hard and still swaying slightly.
Several people in rough-spun clothes gathered around him, chattering away.
Their tones held surprise, pity, and a hint of vigilance that was not easy to detect.
Their faces were unfamiliar, their language foreign.
Even the smell on their bodies was completely different from what he remembered, carrying the scent of sunlight and sweat.
‘Want to eat!’ The gnawing urge writhed in his throat.
A-Sang’s gaze fell upon the neck of the person closest to him.
The skin was a healthy wheat color, the carotid artery pulsing faintly beneath it…
That was something alive, something warm, something that drove him mad.
Instinct drove him to open his mouth, a rasping, hoarse sound escaping his throat, but the weakness firmly pinned him down.
Let alone lunging at anyone, he could not even lift his head.
“Looks like he’s not gonna make it.
Let’s take him back first,” another voice said, in that same incomprehensible tongue.
Then, A-Sang was wrapped in a rough piece of sackcloth and placed at the stern of the boat.
The vessel continued on its way.
He could sense the changes in speed, hear the sound of the waves slapping against the hull, and feel the occasional glances cast his way by those people.
He struggled to understand what they were saying, but those syllables were like fish in the water—he could hear them clearly, yet he could not grasp any meaning.
Eventually, the boat reached the shore.
With two people supporting him, one in front and one behind, A-Sang’s feet finally stepped onto solid ground.
He stumbled, looking down.
It was yellow sand, somewhat hot to the touch.
Further ahead stood houses built of wood and thatch, one after another.
Wisps of cooking smoke curled up from the rooftops.
A few children in odd-looking clothes gathered around curiously to look at him, only to be shooed away by laughing adults.
This place was noisy, filled with all sorts of sounds he could not understand: voices speaking, dogs barking, the thud-thud-thud of some tool striking wood…
And then there was a faint aroma drifting over, something like the smell of food, which triggered an empty rumble in his belly—not the craving for flesh and blood, but a purer, more fundamental feeling of “hunger.”
A-Sang was taken to a low thatched hut and laid on a simple wooden bed covered with dry straw.
Someone brought over a bowl of something steaming.
It was a paste, giving off the aroma of grain.
A rough hand scooped up a spoonful and brought it to his mouth, speaking words in a very gentle tone.
He looked at the spoonful of mush, then at the person offering it—an old woman, her face full of wrinkles, her eyes very soft.
Should he eat this?
This stuff was not flesh and blood.
It had no pulsing beat.
It was completely different from the “food” in his understanding.
But the empty rumbling in his stomach grew stronger, and the weakness urged him on.
In the end, A-Sang hesitated, then opened his mouth.
The warm paste slid down his throat, carrying a faint sweetness.
Surprisingly…
it was not bad.
A bowl of porridge down, and it seemed a tiny bit of strength returned.
He leaned against the wall, watching the old woman put away the bowls and chopsticks, watching the people coming and going outside the house, listening to those still-incomprehensible words.
What is this place?
Why did they save me?
What…
should I do?
Countless questions circled in his empty mind.
A-Sang was like a newborn baby, utterly ignorant of this world.
The only thing he could be certain of was that he seemed different from before.
He was no longer that monster who knew only how to eat people, yet he could not become a “living person” like those around him either.
He was now just a zombie who had drifted to a strange place and suddenly gained consciousness.
In this little seaside fishing village, with its strange language and sunny climate, his new life began with a bewildering drift and a bowl of warm porridge.
The thatched hut became his temporary shelter.
The old woman’s name was Maggie.
That was what everyone in the village called her.
Her husband had died young, and her son had encountered a storm while out fishing at sea and never returned.
That left her all alone in this house.
Granny Maggie seemed to take him for some poor soul who had suffered a calamity.
That very night, after bringing him food and helping him eat, she used her calloused hands to wipe down his body, all the while muttering something under her breath.
A-Sang could not understand.
He could only look at her with his somewhat dull, lifeless eyes.
Granny Maggie also seemed to know he had lost his memory and currently understood nothing.
So she did not expect a response from him.
She just talked to herself.
Sometimes she would point at the fishing boats outside the window and say a few words, sometimes she would pick up her needle and thread to gesture, and occasionally she would touch his forehead, as if checking whether his condition was improving.
A-Sang’s body recovered very quickly.
By the next morning, he was able to stand by holding onto the wall, and later on, he could walk slowly inside the house.
His stiff joints felt as if they had been injected with lubricating oil.
Though they were still not as nimble as a normal person’s, they were sufficient to support him in performing simple actions.
As for those cravings to eat people, they never fully disappeared.
Granny Maggie probably thought it was inconvenient to keep calling him “Hey” or “young man,” and decided to give him a new name.
She sat by the bedside, watched him finish the porridge in his bowl, put down her sewing, pointed at him, and repeated a word over and over.
“Lu…
ci…
an.”
The syllables were slow and clear.
She said it several times in a row, then smiled and patted his arm.
He froze for a moment, looked at the warmth in the old woman’s eyes, and vaguely understood something.
This word was meant for him?
“Lu…” He tried to open his mouth, but his throat felt like it had been scraped with sandpaper.
The sound that came out was hoarse and dry, completely out of tune.
Granny Maggie, however, smiled even more happily, saying and gesturing, “That’s right, Lucian.”
He tried once more, and this time it sounded slightly more like it: “Ci…
an.”
“Lucian.”
“Lu…
cian.”
Granny Maggie called the name many times over to help him adjust to it.
Every time he responded, she would show a kind, benevolent smile.
A-Sang gradually understood as well.
From now on, his name was Lucian.
Just then, Lucian felt someone watching him.
He turned his head a full 180 degrees and saw several village children peeking at him through the crack in the door.
Frightened by the sight of him in that state, they scattered in a flash.