“Kris, get stuff done tonight, or no going home.”

Stupid boss.

Above all I needed to suppress, I had a life too. It’s not like whenever there was an unfinished work, it was always me who was in charge. Not just because he was the boss he could do whatever he wanted to. Alright, he was the boss. He sure could do whatever he wanted.

It was very clear that the reason I had to stay within some extra hours at the office was because he, Sir Ignorant, neglected to check the graphic designer’s (not me) work before submitting the final product to the printing section of the company. Luckily the printing process could be aborted when it had only reached approximately one fifth of the whole thing. If Xiumin, my officemate, hadn’t realised that there was something really wrong with the posters and they ended up being sent halfway around the world to Brazil, our company would have encountered a bankrupt by now.

So now everything had been thrown at me: the boss’ anger over what he had done wrong, the needs-to-be-quickly-finished work, and the key to the pantry in case I needed to get some coffee.

The clock indicated that it was almost midnight. The office had become more of a scary place than a sturdy and busy place that it had always been. The only sound that could overlap the emptiness in the air was the sound of my computer running, and the sound of me sipping my coffee, once in a while. I would guess there were only me and one of the security guards, who might have fallen asleep in his midnight shift.

I wanted to sleep, too.

Only a few steps were left until I could go home: tidying up the outline of the poster, evaluating the work, flattening the image, saving the file, and last but the most important, sending it to the big boss to be checked and then sent as soon as possible to the client. They were easy steps, but I was doing it in slow-mo. Well, you know, everything easy always seems big and hard to do if you are not into it at all. Or if it’s simply not your work and instead of doing it you could’ve gone home and slept.

I stretched out my arms and yawned a little, something I had been doing quite frequently during the last tens of minutes. Bending my hand to the side, I grabbed my coffee and pulled it closer, but before even a single drop of the coffee entered my mouth, something caught my attention.

A photograph.

I didn’t remember ever putting a photograph on my office desk, so I picked it up from where it was lying and examined it carefully. There was me in the picture, and two other people. One of them was my brother, Luhan, but I couldn’t recognize the other one. In that picture we didn’t seem to know each other and I did not even remember this picture being taken, although I could clearly see that my eyes were aware of the camera.

And then I remembered. The scene in the picture was right before that accident happened. Right before I lost my brother.

Knock.

I dropped the photo on the floor by accident and before I could kneel down and look for it, I realised someone had just knocked my door and was there at the door. So then I stood up straight, but then remembered that the door wasn’t locked.

“Come in,” As expected, it was Yixing, the security guard who was in charge until the clock strikes 2 AM.

“I’m sorry for disturbing, Sir,” he said. “Just stopped by to inform you that I will be doing some stuff in the photocopy room so I won’t be staying downstairs. Just dial the photocopy room if you need anything.”

I shrugged my shoulder. “That’s perfectly fine. You too, dial my room if you need any help,”

“Fair enough,” he put on a smile and stepped back to close the door.

“And oh, one more thing, Yixing!”

I could hear the door creek once more and his face showed up again. “What’s that, Sir?”

“Just call me Kris,”

I got back to my chair and knelt down to look for the photograph, but the clock had struck 11.10 and I thought maybe it was better to just finish my work first. The photograph could wait.

Crop here, crop there. Edit. Move. Layer one, layer two… crop again. Replace. Save. Open e-mail, attach. Send.

11.45 PM.

E-mail sent. I turned off my computer with relief and turned to reach for my coffee. Getting up from my chair, I stretched my body and cracked my neck, a sound of a click vines up to my ears. Switching off the lamps and the heater, I flung the door open.

I could have spilled my coffee and stained the white shirt I was wearing if I hadn’t seen a living body attempting to enter my room at the exact same time I was getting out of it.

Yixing.

“Sorry, Sir, didn’t see that coming,”

“No problem. You done with the photocopy thingy?

He looked confused. “How do you know, Sir? I just came here to get you informed. I haven’t even started yet.”

“Don’t be kidding, you just came here like twenty or thirty minutes ago, telling me the exact same thing you just told me you were about to get me informed about,”

He looked even more confused, and bubbles of question suddenly popped in my mind. “I was downstairs the whole time,”

“Well you must have forgotten it, then.” I shrugged my shoulders.

“No, really, I was downstairs,” his gaze strengthened, his expression turned into an expression that looked a lot like he was trying to ensure me. “I was downstairs closing the west gate right before I came up here,”

Now it was me who put on a confused look. I knew him and he was a perfectly normal person, he could not have forgotten that he just climbed up three storeys by stairs (the elevators were always shut down at night) and knocked on my door. Weird thoughts suddenly came to my mind, and I felt like I was starting to realise what was actually happening.

“What time does the closing of the gates occur every day?” I jumped to a question.

“Ten thirty to eleven at night, starting from north to west,”

“Does it always happen at those hours?”

He nodded with no doubts. “It’s automatic,” he explained, “unless there is a technical problem, it’s always around those hours,”

“Was there a technical problem today, then?”

“No, Sir.”

The worst of all thoughts came across my head and when that little part of my brain jumped into a conclusion without compromising with any other parts of the brain, half of my body felt like jumping off a cliff without any safety. I rushed back to my desk after switching on the lamp, and quickly started up my computer.

I looked up.

“Hold on a second, Yixing…” I could not believe what my eyes were lying their sight upon. “Were all the clocks in this building set at the same time?”

He nodded.

“So if it was 11.47 in my office, wouldn’t it be 11.47 too on the hallway?”

“Certainly, but it isn’t 11.47 right now,”

Exactly.

The clock said 11.07 PM.

Lumps of confusion, panic and worry curled up in my throat. I inhaled deeply, trying not to look panicked. “Alright Yixing, thanks.”

“If you need anything, Sir, I will be in the photocopy room. Just dial its number.”

Yixing turned to close the door, and as the sound of his footsteps began to fade away, I tried to focus and stop panicking. This couldn´t be happening. None of this. No one could have changed the clock of my room while I was getting out of it. Obviously impossible. My fingers kept trembling and as feelings of worry started to build up in my chest, I opened all the folders I used while reediting the poster, and yes, the worst of all, the thing I was afraid of the most actually came true.

Everything, every single action I had done from 11.00 PM had been undone.

I managed to open the Recycle Bin but there was nothing. I remembered I had emptied it this morning, since everything that was there was complete junk, but I did not remember a single memory about emptying it after doing all this work on the poster. I opened the web browser and checked my e-mail, opening all folders: sent messages, inbox, draft, trash, spam… and nothing involved with the work I had just done showed up.

I started sweating.

And then, I realized something else.

The room was fairly warm. I remembered perfectly I just turned the heater off right before I went out of the room, but now it felt as if the heater had not been turned off the whole day. It couldn’t have gotten warm by itself since it was about minus 2 degrees Celsius outside.

I dashed my body against the chair. Had the time just been turned back? No, it couldn’t have been. Even if it had, why didn’t I go back as well? Why did my consciousness tell me that the time had passed longer than this?

I looked at the clock. 11.15.

With my heart feeling strange, scared and pissed off, I decided to start doing everything all over again. I managed to do it faster, a little faster, a little more faster… copy, crop, paste, delete, replace and all. Save, attach, send.

“Huft,” I leaned my back against the chair again, feeling a strange sort of relief. I looked up at the clock again and it had struck 11.36. I finished the work ten minutes faster than I did before.

Inhale, exhale.

Turning off the computer, I grabbed my bag and my coffee mug, switching off all the lamps. And the heater. Yes, it was . Then with feelings of thrill being sent down my nerves, I opened the door.

Thank God, Yixing was not there.

I locked the door to my office and walked down the corridor. No single living thing was there. All lamps in the office had been switched off except those on the floor I was on and on the far end of the building, where the security guards stayed during their shift. I could hear every single thump of my soles banging against the granite floor, creating echoes across the corridor.

Cough.

I remembered having forgotten to take my medicines today. I had been sort of ill the last two weeks. The doctor said that I was supposed to have recovered from this cough three or four days after I started taking the medicines, but it had been two weeks and although I kept taking them regularly, nothing had actually gotten better.

Nothing at all.

The silence that conquered the air thrilled my nerves, trees outside of the building were waving right and left, right and left, making the situation sort of creepy. Then something showed up from the end of the corridor, emerging from the stairs, and trying not to get scared so fast, I realised it was a silhouette of a man.

“Evening, Sir, finished already?”

Yixing.

“Evening, Yixing, yeah my work’s done. How about y…”

Hold on a minute.

He called me Sir. He called me so just like he did a few minutes back there in front of my workroom. Didn’t I tell him to—

“I was just about to go to your room to—“

“—wait a second, what time is it now, Yixing?”

…

Only God knew why, it was 11 o’clock.

Or, that was what the clock said.