Chapter Text
It’s the light he remembers the most. The lightning of a discharge too encompassing for every human body to withstand. Maybe the light isn’t even in the real world, maybe the whirling blizzard he sees in front of his eyes, as his vision blurs, is just all of his neurons firing at once, overwhelmed by the amounts of electricity they are confronted with. His surroundings fade away. Maybe he has closed his eyes, or maybe his senses have started transferring to a plane of existence where mere solid objects hold no might.
There is pain as well, but it’s just one of so many sensations that Shang Qinghua barely registers it. His body feels weirdly small, like it’s bereft of its limbs and all he still has are the contours of a torso lying on the floor of his one room apartment. In the turmoil that his brain capacities have become, thoughts are flowing like leaves carried by the wind. The intense white, although it is still as blinding as before, whirls with colors that no human being is supposed to see. It is beautiful. It is nauseating. Strangely, his last thought, like a slurred notion in a hazy dream, is that the light should guide him into a direction, but there is no direction in the blazing brightness around him, and the swirls of unreal colors carry his remaining consciousness to a plane of existence he isn’t able to comprehend.
Time passes.
Slowly the flood of sensations dims a bit, and with it, Shang Qinghua regains the capability to form sluggish thoughts. He asks himself where he is. It cannot be an instance of heaven he reasons, since behind all his fatigue, he feels unsettled, as if the current of electricity has embedded itself into his veins and is buzzing quietly but steadily. It doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. Nothing feels real.
Time passes.
He doesn’t know how fast, only that it does. It manifests in the ebbing of the light. And sound. He doesn’t know when the sound has started to keep the light its unsteady company, only that it’s there, as an impression of audibility, dim and unsubstantial, but there, nonetheless. He is sure of it.
Time passes.
Sometimes now, he can make out distinct sounds. Like hearing a conversation from beneath the water, when you cannot make out the contents, but you still listen, despite the nonsensicality of it, mesmerized by the possibility of understanding. One voice stands out, is the loudest. It makes his disembodied being thrum. He still doesn’t understand a distinct word, but it feels like if he just was a little, little closer, he could.
Time passes.
Wait, he isn’t disembodied anymore. While he doesn’t feel fully human, he certainly is more than the specter he was before. What is before? Where is before? He still can’t answer it. But all this takes a back seat now that he is able to move again. His limbs, if he can call them that – he isn’t really sure – are connected to some part of his brain he can’t control quite yet. Every command to his body is involuntary. Sometimes his body sends sensations back; touch, he thinks. Slowly, he regains some semblance of control over his extremities. His movements are still twitchy. Just as uncoordinated as he was, when he tipped over the energy drink which then sloshed in the direction of his laptop and the socket strip, and he tried to save his equipment and then… the voices get louder. Panicked, he thinks in a haze. But he can’t pay them any mind. Not if his own panic is so palpable and he is not able to shut it down. His body is trashing, he knows. It sends him tactile sensations he cannot comprehend; all he knows is that they get more and more and more, like something is pressing on him from every side possible but one.
When the feeling eases, Shang Qinghua can finally feel his surroundings. Held by big hands, his only other contact with the world is the light. But even the light has changed. While it still has this eerie quality, a part of it has eased into a real, natural light filtering through his closed eyes. If he could only open them a crack, he might be able to see it. To reassure himself that his time as a disembodied entity in an immaterial world has finally come to an end. Only, when he tries to move his lids, they don’t deign to move. He can faintly feel one of his hands twitching, but that’s all. Furthermore, this small motion has drained him of all the energy that’s left to him. Exhausted, he lets himself be laid down on something that might be a blanket. This last memory of this long-lasting fever dream is a hand gently stroking his head. A nice closure, he thinks dimly. Only a long time later, once the haziness has settled and he has come to comprehend the life he was gifted, does he realize that this day he was born.
The following days are lost in the mist of coping with the concept of reality. Every movement and thought feels draining, and a sense of time still has to be regained, but finally he can come to one definite conclusion:
Shang Qinghua is alive. He has a new body, a new world, even a new family. He must have reincarnated. Soon enough, he is sure, the remaining memories from his last life will fade away, until he is nothing but an unknowing baby. But whenever he closes his eyes, whether for a night’s rest or just a short moment of reprieve, the light is there, reminding him of how he came to be. It’s stronger some days than others. Some days it flashes, and he thinks that he can hear whispers. Some days he feels the phantom of a touch tingling on his skin, and he wants to recoil in revulsion, but when he looks up, there is nobody near him.
Thus, he shakes off that feeling. He is a new Shang Qinghua now, his reincarnated body and soul a clean slate to write a colorful story on. A person full of hope and endless possibilities, no matter where or how he got reborn. But first of all, he is a small child who needs to relearn fine motor skills. A life awaits him, and he is happy to shape it.