That morning, Zhou Qiming was three minutes late.
He hadn't overslept.
Nor had anything gone wrong on the way.
He knew perfectly well he'd left at his usual time—
even a little earlier than usual.
Yet when he swiped his card at the company entrance, the machine beeped, and the time on the screen had already passed nine.
He paused before the turnstile.
Looked at the display.
Then at his phone.
The time matched.
No discrepancy.
He frowned briefly, but didn't linger, stepping inside.
Three minutes late was nothing.
Here, tardiness came in many forms.
Sometimes it was traffic.
Sometimes it was the system.
Sometimes, no one bothered to notice.
He sat down at his desk. Just as he put on his headphones, a message from his supervisor popped up.
[Supervisor]: Keep an eye on efficiency today
[Supervisor]: The system's running cross-checks lately
He replied with a simple Got it.
No further explanation.
A system window appeared.
The task volume was slightly higher than yesterday's.
As if compensating for something.
He began working.
At first, everything flowed smoothly.
Assess.
Check.
Submit.
The motions were almost automatic.
Until the tenth or so task, when he suddenly realized he'd missed an image.
Not misread it.
He hadn't even registered its existence.
The system had already moved on.
He scrolled back.
The entry was marked Processed.
The result was correct.
Yet he couldn't recall ever seeing it.
The sensation made him pause.
Briefly.
So brief that the coworker beside him didn't notice.
He adjusted his headphones and continued.
Before noon, it happened twice more.
Each time was so slight
he couldn't tell whether he'd simply zoned out.
But taken together, it became unsettling—
like someone had walked a short stretch of the road for him
while he wasn't paying attention,
and that stretch had been navigated flawlessly.
At lunchtime, he deliberately checked the time.
Exactly twelve o'clock.
The cafeteria was crowded.
As he carried his tray looking for a seat, he suddenly realized he had been standing still for a moment.
Not a lapse in concentration.
More like his movement had been paused.
He looked down at the tray.
The food was still warm.
Nothing seemed amiss.
Yet when he sat down, an illusion washed over him—
as if he had already occupied this seat once before.
The thought tightened his chest.
He pushed it away at once.
The afternoon went even more smoothly than the morning.
Smooth to a fault.
Tasks were completed one after another.
The system issued no further efficiency warnings.
But he found it increasingly difficult to recall what he'd actually done.
It wasn't amnesia.
It was as if those processes left no trace.
Like watching a pre-edited video.
Everything important was there.
The in-between had been cut out.
Around three o'clock, a system prompt appeared.
[Reminder]
Please confirm your current status
It was an ordinary pop-up.
Normally, people would click Confirm without thinking.
Zhou Qiming stared at it for a few seconds.
His face reflected faintly in the screen.
Expression flat.
He clicked Confirm.
The window disappeared.
In that moment, a realization surfaced—
The system wasn't just confirming whether he was online.
It was confirming whether he was here.
The thought left a hollow ache in his chest.
But it was quickly overwritten by the next task.
When he left work, he walked more slowly than usual.
Not because he was tired.
But because he wasn't certain he should go straight home.
Standing at the entrance of the office building, he paused again.
Just like the day before.
The wind passed through.
He looked up at the sky.
Gray.
Nothing worth looking at.
Yet he stared for a while anyway.
As if waiting for something to align.
On the subway home, he sat with his eyes open.
The lights in the carriage brightened and dimmed with each stop.
He fixed his gaze on the route map above the doors.
Station names lit up one by one.
When his stop arrived, he barely registered it.
The doors were already open.
He stood and followed the crowd out.
His movements were half a beat slower.
No one noticed.
By the time he reached his rented apartment, night had fallen.
He turned on the light, changed his shoes.
Everything felt familiar.
Familiar enough to be reassuring.
He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water.
The moment the water touched his lips, he froze.
For an instant, he couldn't tell which glass this was.
It wasn't confusion.
It was a loss of sequence.
He set the glass down.
Stood there for a moment.
The refrigerator hummed steadily, beat by beat.
He leaned against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor.
Not from exhaustion.
Just needing to pause.
As he sat there, he noticed something.
The sounds in the room seemed thinner.
Not quieter.
But as if the background had been turned down.
Like someone had lowered the volume of reality by a notch.
He closed his eyes.
Not deliberately.
Yet his body reacted at once.
That familiar sensation of being lifted hadn't fully arrived.
But its outline was already there.
Very close.
Close enough that he felt he could reach it without sleeping.
The realization sent a chill through him.
Not fear.
But an instinctive alertness.
He opened his eyes.
The light sharpened again.
He stood, walked to the window, and pulled back the curtains.
Lights flickered outside.
Cars moved.
Voices drifted faintly upward.
Everything was still there.
Yet he felt it clearly—
today, he had been present a little less.
Not because of overtime.
Not because he'd slacked off.
But because a small portion of time
had been quietly taken away.
That night, he didn't fall asleep right away.
Nor did he deliberately stay awake.
He simply sat on the edge of the bed
until drowsiness came on its own.
Just before closing his eyes, a thought surfaced.
If this kind of missing continued,
one day, he might not notice it immediately.
The thought was faint.
But it didn't disappear.