Reality Timeline · Friday, June 14th, 2024Zhang Huan-an / Disordered Actions, Unstable Speech, Fragmented Self
05:03.He wasn't sure if he had slept.When his eyes opened, dawn had begun to bleed across the windows.The dormitory was silent.His notebook lay open on the desk.
Scrawled in red ink, with jagged pressure:
"Today is your last chance to tell the truth."
He had no memory of writing it.He tried to erase the words, but his hands trembled.Nails cracked. Knuckles raw.Signs that he had repeated some unknown action through the night.
—
08:12.
He walked into the precinct—calm on the surface, normal in pace.But his eyes wandered, unable to meet another gaze for more than three seconds.
Colleagues greeted him.He didn't respond—only muttered under breath:
"I didn't schedule it. I didn't schedule it. I didn't schedule it…"
The duty roster dropped onto his desk.He suddenly barked:
"Who changed it?!"
No one knew what he meant.
—
10:37.
Chief Lin approached to discuss coordination details.
But Zhang's tone shifted the moment he saw him:
"You knew.You all knew from the beginning, didn't you?!"
Lin froze—solemn, silent.Then gently replied:
"Xiao-Yu, we're all just—"
"What did you call me?"
Zhang lunged forward, eyes wild, nose nearly touching the Chief's.He searched his face like it held the answer to the universe.
"Say it again. Say my name again."
Lin lowered his voice:
"…Yu Yong'an."
Zhang stepped back as if struck.His lips quivered.A sound, more breath than meaning, escaped his throat:
"…Then why do I still remember her name?"
—
12:20.
He refused lunch.Instead, he taped a note to the glass of his desk:
[Do not trust today's date][Do not stand where there are shadows][If anyone asks what day it is—don't answer]
Colleagues began to avoid him.In the breakroom, only whispers and sidelong glances remained.
—
15:01.
He stormed into a meeting room, cut off an ongoing briefing,and pointed at the projector screen.
He shouted:
"This is fake!You play this briefing every week—every time the same!I've heard it four times already—always on the same day!"
The room fell silent.
The moderator gently asked him to step out.He stayed, murmuring:
"You don't see him anymore, do you…?The one who speaks like me, dresses like me—but isn't me.Don't you think he's strange…?"
—
17:45.
They convinced him to return to the dorm.
As he left, he muttered:
"Next week they'll write me out.I'm just a backup—I'm not the official version…"
Back in his room, he spread out notebooks, duty logs, financial ledgers—not to organize,but to prove something.
He whispered to himself:
"I existed.I really existed.I'm not fake.I remember Mazu's return route…I remember the way she looked at me the first time…"
He never said who she was.No one knew.
But this room—was no longer his.
It had become a threshold between two worlds.
—
Zhang Huan-an / A Memory That Didn't Wait for Him
Just before sleep could claim him,a scene flickered—not like a dream, but like a file opened without request.
A narrow room.White curtains.A girl sitting by the window, one knee drawn up.
She wasn't looking at him.But her voice reached him anyway—a soft, aching tone, like someone trying to remember the right way to say goodbye.
"You used to stand right there.You used to say: 'Even if I forget everything else—I'll remember your name.'"
Her hair fell across her cheek.She wiped a finger across the glass, tracing a symbol—Not a cross. Something older. More fractured.
"But now you forget me, and remember the cross instead."
He stepped forward.The floor cracked under his weight—like reality couldn't hold both of them.
She looked up. Her eyes shimmered, not with tears, but with time.
"If you forget me one more time…I'll start remembering you instead."
The room collapsed into silence.
Zhang blinked—and found himself back in his dorm.But the weight on his chest remained—like he had just said goodbye to someone who still hadn't left.
---
[Notebook Entry｜2024.06.14｜Friday] (torn page)
You're not truly mad.They only made you believe madness belonged to you.That's when you started thinking you were the problem.
When did you go silent?Was it the day you decided to stop telling people:"I heard it"?
Stop writing.The words will be replaced.
Use memory.Use the misaligned pain.Use the cross from your dream.It remembers you.Don't forget it.
Zhang Huan-an's Mutation and the Descent Toward IntegrationJuly–August 2024 · Extensions of the Cyclical Collapse
Tuesday, July 2nd
That morning, he wore his uniform—but no belt.His notebook slid off his shoulder and landed on the floor.As he bent to pick it up, he noticed a note taped under his desk:
[You no longer need to write][Tuesday remembers on its own]
He didn't know who left it.Nor did he recall choosing not to write.
Yet the pages remained blank—empty line after line,as if language had been erased for the month.
He knew he was alive,but the world no longer communicated with him through logic or speech.
It fed him images, sounds, instructions—directly into his body.
Friday, July 5th
The precinct was silent.No one spoke to him directly anymore.
His words were too disjointed.His gaze, misaligned.His tone—unstable.
He spoke in fractures:
"The case files, I… we've already handed them over."
"If needed, I can explain directly… he's listening too."
Colleagues couldn't tell who "we" referred to.Or who he was.
—
That afternoon, he pasted a grainy black-and-white photo onto the shift log.
No date. No markings.
It showed him, standing at the precinct gate—passing by another version of himself.
The image was blurred, the focus off.But no one questioned its authenticity.
—
He had lost track of the date.Time had begun to reappear, looping rather than moving forward.
Tuesday, July 16th
He drew a map of a non-existent route—
from the precinct to Di'an Road,cutting into a dead-end alley off Qiyang Lane.
"We've been there before," he told his team,"just… not in this version of your timeline."
They visited the location that afternoon.
Nothing matched.No street numbers aligned.Even the power poles he had marked weren't there.
And yet—the incident log that day showed a report filed from that very alley.
Time: 2024/07/16 14:07Content: "Someone in a police uniform entered my memory."Filed by: (no name)Audio: (no sound)Note: "Transferred to: Y.A."
The system's assigned handler wasn't Zhang Huan-an.It was Yu Yong'an.
Friday, July 19th
He no longer tried to explain himself.
For every error, every misaligned memory, every reflected version of him seen through others' eyes—he responded only with a quiet sentence:
"I know you don't recognize me anymore.That's okay.I'm starting not to recognize myself either."
He had once tried to resist.
Now he followed the invisible track laid before him—like a sacred, strange ritual,each Tuesday and Friday folding him inward again.
—
His notebook for that month repeated the same line:
"I no longer ask who I am—but when will he fully become me."
Tuesday, August 6th
He hadn't spoken in a week.
Not because he lost the ability—but because language had become untrustworthy.
He tried speaking into the mirror.His lips lagged behind.
Typing produced sentences he hadn't yet finished forming in thought.
That morning, he found a note:
"Today, you will speak three sentences you didn't write.Record them.Or you will believe you were the author."
He kept the note.Said nothing all day.
Until 18:44, when he answered a colleague's question in the hallway:
"She won't appear tomorrow."
He wasn't aware he had spoken.But everyone else paused in silence.
The next day,a close colleague submitted a sudden transfer request.The date matched.
It wasn't prophecy.It was projection.
His language had begun to carry outcomes from other timelines.
Friday, August 9th
He no longer walked—he glided.
Each turn, each stair, every doorway—he anticipated them.
Even people's appearances and words arrived like recorded loops.
His speech was no longer generated.It played—like tape.
He passed Chief Lin, and said calmly:
"The last time you brought me here was five years ago."
Chief Lin blinked:
"When have we ever come here together…?"
Zhang didn't turn around.
"Back then,you didn't know who 'I' was."
—
That night, he locked himself in his room.On the wall, he formed a symbol with tape:
A cross within a cross,and in the center—numbers aligned to form a smaller cross:
1, 4, 5, 9, 2, 6, 8, 3, 7
He whispered:
"This isn't a code.It's a time sequence.The last one he can still use my body to write."
"After August, I will vanish, piece by piece—every Friday."
Tuesday, August 20th
Rumors stirred at the precinct:
That Zhang Huan-an's case logs didn't match anyone else's.
That he filed visits to the already-dead.
That he whispered the exact final words of deceased relativeswith perfect inflection.
That day, he had no fieldwork scheduled,but requested a shift anyway:
"I've already been there once.This time is to confirm the replay angle."
He left a note on his schedule:
"If I can see Yu Yong'an's memories ahead of time—does that mean I no longer belong to this timeline?"
Friday, August 23rd
His voice began to change.
There was a resonance—as if another voice overlapped his own.
That afternoon, a colleague paused mid-conversation and asked:
"…Who just spoke that line?"
Zhang replied:
"I didn't say anything."
—
He could only hold on to himself through scribbles and muttering.
"Today I'm Zhang.Tomorrow I may be Yu.The day after—we'll be us."
He wrote that in his journal.
The language had lost its subject.The self was unraveling into shared identity.
—
And for the entire month,he said only one sentencethat truly belonged to him:
"Please don't say my name—because you don't know who you're calling."
Zhang Huan-an's Mutation and the Integration of IdentitySeptember–October 2024 · Dislocated Existence and Dual Memory Synchronization
Tuesday, September 3rd
He filed his first formal request for extended leave.
The reason: neurological fatigue and adaptive dissociation.
But within the precinct, whispers stirred:
"He can't recognize the floors anymore.""I saw him speaking into the glass of the copier—like it was going to answer him."
All he said was:
"I need silence."
But his silence was not rest.It was a temporary retreat from the touchpoints of this timeline.
Friday, September 6th
Though officially on leave,an internal message suddenly appeared in the precinct's system—sent from his account:
[Subject]: Friday Review Protocol
[Content]:・Not being present ≠ Not existing・Physical stillness ≠ Time suspension・Duplicate data ≠ Incorrect transmission
→ Do not delete any anomalous files→ Yu Yong'an (Zhang Huan-an) will continue to observe your responses
The system auto-locked his account for six hours.IT couldn't trace the login.
It was as if the system itself had written it.
Chief Lin murmured later:
"He's not here…but he's still here."
Tuesday, September 17th
Even during leave, he kept appearing—in quiet corners of the city:
• At dawn: the noodle shop near Qiyang Road—always an empty seat• At dusk: beneath the streetlamp beside the precinct—cameras always blinked once• At night: the riverbank bench under the Di'an bridge— incident log showed: "Shadow figure appeared in a restricted zone"
He never spoke. Just sat.Sometimes nodded, as if listening to something.
Witnesses said:
"He looked like he was waiting for someone.Smiled once—like the message had arrived."
But the one returning was never "him"—Only all the personas, memories, and voicesthat had once been displaced into his body.
Friday, September 20th
Day 27 of leave.
His sense of embodiment began to dissolve.
He dropped cups without meaning to.His hand missed the page when he tried to write.His reactions lagged—but his words were still perfectly accurate.
He wrote:
"I can feel my body.But it doesn't feel like I'm moving it.""It's like someone borrowed me, and left fingerprints behind."
He called this state:"The Observer Shell."
That month, he left only one note with any raw emotion:
"This isn't leave. This is exile."
Tuesday, October 1st
There was no record of him anywhere.
Not just absent from duty—he vanished from all systems:
No CCTV.No login logs.No GPS.No medical pings.
Even his phone signal stalled at:
September 30th, 23:59
But at 23:51, a shadowy figure flickered across the precinct's backdoor camera.
He wore a uniform.Moved exactly like Zhang Huan-an.
But his face—blurred.As if a veil of unfocusable time masked his features.
The system flagged the footage as "outdated recording"—with a timestamp marked:
October 1st, 2025
He appeared.But in a time that did not yet exist.
Friday, October 4th
He reappeared in the precinct hallway—civilian clothes, bloodshot eyes, notebook in hand.
Someone asked:
"Where have you been?"
He replied:
"I never left.You've only just caught up to the day I was already on."
His tone—calm.Eyes unwavering.Every word sounded… rehearsed.
But a second later, he stopped speaking—bit his lip, as if warned from inside.
He was beginning to feel it:
His right to language was being revoked.
That night, a note was found on his desk:
[2024/10/04]
High overlap in memory today.
Morning: I conversed with Chief Lin in Xinan.
Afternoon: I was still in bed, unmoving.
Both memories complete. No gaps.
→ Assessment: dual consciousness syncing, not yet integrated→ Suspected "memory proxy" present—someone else experienced the event, but I can recall it with emotional precision
Annotation: "I didn't live this day, but I remember it."
Tuesday, October 15th
He was spotted at Tamsui MRT Station.Blank stare. Civilian clothes.
At 5:40 AM, a civilian photographed him standing at a narrow alley by Sanmin Market,whispering to a peeling wall:
"The me from here should already be dead…but you're still speaking to me."
When approached, he smiled and replied:
"You're a year too late.But that's not your fault."
His words felt like a conversation—but the air held no answer.
—
That night, his journal bore handwriting unmistakably not his:
[Y.A.]
Zhang, if you're still here—stop trying to go back.We came from opposite ends.We can't both turn around.
If we meet again,neither of us will survive.
Friday, October 18th
His leave was extended.Official reason: recurring spatiotemporal confusion.
But that day, he appeared in a past assignment log:
[Supplemental Entry]2024/06/14, FridayZhang Huan-an — Present at Longjing Migrant Factory Preliminary Review
But that day's photos clearly showed him in October's clothes—not the attire from June.
Logs unsynced.Identity displaced.The system began to "remember" days he hadn't lived—and forget the ones he had.