LIGHTNOVELWORLD 52. A Strange Sense of Déjà Vu
“Ling Ling! Ling Ling! You jerk, open up! If you don’t open this door, I swear I’ll come in with a knife!”
Ling Ning, still half-asleep, jolted awake at the sound of this all-too-familiar voice—her classmate and editor, Xiao Xiao.
As Ling Ning got out of bed to open the door, she stopped, looking around the room. This wasn’t her current place. Glancing in the mirror, she saw the sparse stubble, the weary eyes—it was her pre-transformation self.
Ling Ning—no, it was Ling Ling, staring blankly at his reflection. Could it all have been just a dream? But it had felt so real.
Xiao Xiao’s voice rang out again from behind the door, warning that she’d give him five more minutes to open up before she left for good.
“Sigh~”
Ling Ling sighed, his mind in a jumble, and went to open the door.
Xiao Xiao, dressed in business attire, came in and immediately poured herself a glass of water. After yelling at him outside, her throat was parched. Despite her petite frame and delicate looks, Xiao Xiao was tough as nails. People always assumed the two of them were dating back in college, but they were, in truth, nothing more than friends.
“Are you dead or something? Can’t even open a door?” she huffed, flopping down on the sofa and casually playing with her phone, not bothering that her childish strawberry-print underwear was visible.
Ling Ling gave her an exasperated look. She’d never treated him like a man, though he hadn’t really seen her as a woman, either.
He shook his head and went to his computer, only to find that the latest draft was on Chapter 51. But he clearly remembered writing over a hundred chapters before his transformation. No wonder Xiao Xiao’s behavior today felt so familiar—it made sense now.
If Chapter 51 was the last thing he’d written, that meant it was two months ago.
With this realization, Ling Ling copied Chapter 51 onto a flash drive and went to the living room, where Xiao Xiao was engrossed in a mobile game. If memory served…
“Xiao Xiao, didn’t you say today you’d do a ten-pull to break your streak of bad luck?”
She glanced at him, puzzled. “Did I say that?”
“Yeah, you did. Don’t stall—get on with it and roll!” Ling Ling half-joked, half-urged.
“If I pull another dud, I’ll castrate you. Don’t underestimate my black belt in Taekwondo.” She glanced pointedly at him before pressing the button for a ten-pull with a serious expression.
A purple glow flashed, and her elusive character, Li Erxia, appeared! Xiao Xiao stared at her screen in shock, then exploded, yelling, “Ling Ling, you damn crow mouth! I’ll kill you!”
“Your editor should be calling any second now,” Ling Ling replied calmly.
“Yeah, right, my editor just called—wha—” Before she could finish, her phone began to ring, and the caller ID, reading “Editor,” rendered her speechless.
After the call ended, Xiao Xiao looked at Ling Ling, speechless, as he continued, “Your editor told you to leave me alone and head back, right?”
“How did you know?” Xiao Xiao stared at him, bewildered, half-wondering if he had been reborn or time-traveled. Shaking her head, she dismissed the ridiculous notion, then straightened up to leave.
“Here, take this.” Ling Ling tossed her the flash drive. “Here’s the latest chapter.”
“If you had it ready, why didn’t you just hand it over? So slow!” she muttered as she walked out.
After Xiao Xiao left, Ling Ling went to the bathroom, retrieved the clothes he hadn’t washed for days, and scrubbed them by hand. If that month in another world had only been a dream, he wouldn’t have learned to do laundry so skillfully—no dream could teach him that. Besides, everything had been far too vivid to be mere fantasy.
After a lot of thought, Ling Ling couldn’t make sense of it. Frustrated, he changed his clothes and decided to go out, hoping to find some clues.
It had only been a month since he’d been gone, but it felt like a lifetime. The familiar faces and places looked strange, somehow distant.
For some reason, Ling Ling felt like someone was watching him. He glanced back, but no one was there. Was it just his imagination? Yet, since he returned, that eerie feeling hadn’t left him.
While searching for the source of the feeling, he heard a commotion. Turning in the direction of the noise, he saw a large truck had crashed into the guardrail.
“No… this isn’t right!” Ling Ling muttered to himself. This accident had happened a week before his transformation. Why was it happening so much earlier now?
And it wasn’t just this—the breakfast shop on the corner should’ve closed years ago and been replaced by a hardware store.
Even the game room across the street, whose owner had been killed six months ago, was still open.
Just then, his phone rang. Checking the screen, he saw the caller ID said “Wife.”
His hand trembled as he struggled to swipe to answer.
“Ling Ling, why aren’t you home?”
The familiar voice on the other end almost made his chest ache.
“What’s wrong? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“N-no, it’s nothing. I’m out right now. Wait for me at home; I’ll be back soon.”
“Mhm, hurry back. Oh, and I want red-braised ribs for lunch!”
“Sure, I’ll make them as soon as I get back.”
“Bye-bye~”
“Bye-bye~”
After hanging up, Ling Ling stood there, dazed. No, this couldn’t be right. His beloved girlfriend had passed away from cancer three years ago.
This surreal mix of all the events he’d experienced… Wait! He suddenly had a realization, turning to look back at an empty lot behind him, almost as if he expected someone to be there.
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Author’s Note:
Today, I unexpectedly pulled a character from a gacha—Reluctant to keep playing Genshin.